Blogs - March 2010

Below are the blog entries for March 2010.

The Five F's of Web Content

By David Cummings
Monday, March 29th, 2010 at 1:00pm

For organizations looking to raise their profile and improve their web presence, one of most important marketing tactics is to generate traffic from search engines. While links to your site from other sites are a powerful driver for ranking well in search engines, it is important not to overlook the need to have high-quality content. Web content is powerful in building the brand image you wish to project.  For this reason, be sure to keep in mind the five F's of web content:

  • Frequent – New content should be published on a regular basis at least once a week if not several times per week. Getting into a good publishing rhythm, and sticking with it, is critical to building momentum as it takes a significant amount of time for the web traffic to build.
  • Fun – Web content, especially blog content, is better served in a fun and personal manner. Engaging readers with content presented in a conversational tone serves as a way to connect without becoming too formal. 
  • Facts – People like facts, figures, and statistics to make the content more interesting.  Hard data helps make your point while providing memorable information like a few compelling numbers that will stick in the reader's mind. 
  • Food for Thought – Don't be afraid to take an unusual stand or position that is likely to make someone think twice about it. Good food for thought is unpredictable and unique.  Most importantly, it will give people a reason to subscribe or comeback to the site.
  • Fans and Followers – Look for ways to stay in touch with your fans and followers through RSS, Facebook, Twitter, and any other networks they use on a regular basis. Promoting your content through social media sites expands your reach beyond the limited access of your own site.
As organizations of all descriptions strive to strengthen their web presence, I urge you to start (and continue) writing strong content. You won’t regret it.

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  • Resources

Cascade Server Training Method

By Kat Liendgens
Friday, March 26th, 2010 at 10:30am

We are very proud of the hands-on Cascade Server training that we provide to our clients on a daily basis. Our trainers work hard to ensure that the curriculum is always current in terms of both best practices and technology. It is also very important to us that our clients receive the most comprehensive training possible, which is why we employ our particular training method.

We train using a generic template. This way, we can ensure that the training covers all of the topics and scenarios to provide developers and administrators with a solid understanding of how to implement and maintain an integration in Cascade Server.

We perform the training on the client’s instance, so that you can keep the training examples and refer back to them as needed. Participants are encouraged to follow along, as our hands-on approach has proven to be very effective. Therefore, we recommend that your administrator set up an account for each person participating in the training. The account should have rights to create a new site, since each person will create their own site in Cascade Server. Of course, if you prefer to just watch and focus on what the trainer is doing, that's fine too.

The standard two days of technical training are geared towards developers and administrators. You will learn how to create Cascade Server templates from existing HTML designs, to create Configuration Sets, Content Types, and Asset Factories, as well as Metadata and Structured Data. The training also covers administrative tasks, such as managing users, groups, and roles. In addition, you will learn how to custom-display your content using XSLT or Velocity. You will also be introduced to workflows, publishing, and web services. As you can see, the agenda is very tight, so in order to ensure that the training can be completed in a comprehensive way and in a manner that allows for maximum hands-on learning, we use a generic site. This does not, however, mean that the training itself is done in a "cookie-cutter" format. In fact, we welcome a vivid exchange between the instructor and the participants, so please do not be shy to ask questions about any Cascade-related topic. If you have any specific areas on which you would like our trainers to focus, please feel free to let us know beforehand.

As always, if you have any questions about training or Professional Services, do not hesitate to contact us.

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Sign Up for the Velocity Functionality in Cascade Webinar

By Chris Armistead
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010 at 12:00pm

As announced yesterday in an email to our primary business contacts and our support contacts, Hannon Hill is excited to present the latest installment in our series of webinars on topics relevant to our customers.  This upcoming webinar will be held next Tuesday, March 30th at 2PM EDT and will focus on one of our most-requested topics: an overview of Velocity functionality - and what we refer to as Script Formats - in Cascade Server. 

We have already received more than 50 sign-ups since sending yesterday's email, and we are hoping to get even more by next Tuesday.  The webinar is absolutely free so we hope you and others from your organization will take advantage of this opportunity. 

Velocity functionality was added to Cascade Server 5.7 and more enhancements were made to it in Cascade Server 6.2.  Because Velocity is a programming language many developers find easier to use than the declarative XSLT, our Services team has seen a steady increase in requests for Velocity training.  It is our hope that this free one-hour webinar will be a great jumping-off point for those who wish to delve deeper into what they can do with Velocity in Cascade. 

Hannon Hill Services Trainer Brent Arrington will be leading this live webinar on Tuesday, March 30th at 2PM EDT and Hannon Hill staff will be available to field your questions on Velocity functionality following Brent's demonstration. 

Be sure to sign up for the webinar today to secure your spot!

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  • News

Call for Speakers - 2010 User Conference

By Uran Piedra
Friday, March 19th, 2010 at 10:30am

Each year we open up the floor for you, our users, to propose topic ideas to present on at the Cascade Server User Conference, and this year is no different. We're back with the annual Call for Speakers!

If you have an idea for a session that you'd like to tell us about, or a unique implementation of Cascade Server that you'd be interested in sharing with others, we'd love to hear from you! Submit a proposal by May 1st to be considered as a presenter.

As a speaker, you'll also receive complimentary admission to the conference including accommodations, access to all conference sessions, scheduled meals, and our open house event.


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  • Events

Cascade Server customers in the NCAA Tournament

By Chris Armistead
Monday, March 15th, 2010 at 12:00pm

If your office is anything like Hannon Hill, you have probably already heard the word "bracket" a hundred times this morning now that the participating teams have been selected for the 2010 NCAA Men's College Basketball tournament.  Picking for and against teams takes on a "conflict of interest" feel as Hannon Hill Client Advocate, because each year more and more Cascade Server customers find themselves in the Big Dance.

As a matter of fact, all four regions contain Cascade Server customers.  The Midwest region features Michigan State University, the University of Houston, the University of Maryland which powers its College of Agriculture & Natural Resources site with Cascade Server, and Georgia Tech which uses Cascade Server for its College of Management.  The East division contains the University of New Mexico, the University of Montana, Clemson University, the University of Missouri, and the University of Texas which uses Cascade for its College of Liberal Arts.  Syracuse and Gonzaga are the Cascade Server representatives in the West division, and rounding it out in the South division are Duke University, Purdue University, and the University of Richmond.

We want to congratulate each of these institutions and wish them all the best of luck in the tournament.  With our customers being represented in each of the regions, we are rooting for an all-Cascade Server Final Four.  As Hannon Hill's numbers continue to grow in higher education, the probability for the all-Cascade Server Final Four increases every year, and I personally have a great feeling about this one.

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  • News

Keys to CMS Project Implemantation Success - Part 5

By Kat Liendgens
Wednesday, March 10th, 2010 at 10:00am

In our last installment of the Keys to Project Implementation Success blog series, we talked about the importance of appropriately timing your Quickstart and training. Your Quickstart should begin as soon as you are ready to start migrating your website to Cascade Server, while training should occur before beginning the project to ensure user buy-in. In this final part of our series, we'll be discussing the importance of client involvement throughout the project.

The Statement of Work
The purpose of the SOW is to ensure that both parties understand the scope of the project. Therefore, we encourage you to read the document thoroughly and to ask any questions you may have. Since we need your signature in order to begin integration work, we recommend reviewing the document as soon as you receive it in order to help us expedite the integration process.

User Acceptance Testing
While QA is included in the QuickStart package, it does not eliminate the need for user acceptance testing. In our experience, we've found that the people best suited for testing the work are those who are not experts on the system. We need your active involvement in the process in order to ensure that the project was implemented as requested. An additional benefit of user acceptance testing is that your staff will automatically get more exposure to the product and, thus, become even more comfortable with it.

For more information about our Quickstart packages, please contact our Services Team.


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Take Another Look at the Sites Model

By Chris Armistead
Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010 at 2:30pm

Since our recent webinar where Services Trainer Ross Williams demonstrated a live migration from the Global Area to Sites in Cascade Server, I have had the privilege of speaking to many customers who have expressed their new-found comfort in performing such a migration themselves.  However, many of these same customers told me they needed a refresher in the benefits of migrating to Sites. 

Administrators and end-users alike will enjoy several features introduced by the Sites model.  The ability to assign Roles to users in particular Sites - for example, giving publishing abilities to a user in one Site but not in another - allows for a user's abilities to be expanded in certain areas and restricted in others.  This feature empowers end-users by expanding certain abilities, while simultaneously helping reduce administrator overhead. 

Another major benefit of Sites is the elimination of Targets, which leads to a more simplified publishing process.  In the Global Area, determining where a Page gets published means walking through the following steps: Page => Content Type => Configuration Set => Configuration => Template => Target => Destination => Transport.  After the move to Sites, determining where a Page gets published requires only these steps: Page => Site => Destination => Transport. 

Cross-Site Template sharing is yet another noteworthy feature of Sites.  Because a Template is no longer tied to a Target, a Template can be used anywhere in the system.  In short, this feature represents a true global Template that can be used across all sites. 

Additionally, migrating to Sites gives users the opportunity to take advantage of Connectors which link Cascade Server to a growing number of best-of-breed third party applications.  The first of these Connectors are the Twitter and Wordpress Connectors, which have already been the subject of much discussion amongst Cascade users. 

With the addition of copying and moving assets right around the bend in Cascade Server 6.7, we encourage you to look into the benefits of Sites once again if you have not migrated already.  The Cascade Server 6.0 Release Notes, 6.2 Release Notes, and 6.4 Release Notes are a great place to start refreshing yourself on all of the great benefits of migrating to Sites.

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