Team Blog

11 Years and Counting

  • Commentary
Happy Birthday to us Hannon Hill turned 11 last month Our chairman, David Cummings, founded the company in his dorm room at Duke, back when most organizations were not using content management systems and the process of maintaining web content was much more tedious than it is now Thanks to David’s vision and entrepreneurial spirit, Hannon Hill has come a long way The company has grown every year, we have added amazing people to our team, and Cascade Server now powers thousands of higher education websites At this time, I thought I’d take a few moments to talk about some of the lessons we’ve learned over the years,

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Rock Paper Scissors Shoot!

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There comes a time during the day, usually shortly after lunch, when I start to feel the afternoon Zzzzz’s creeping up on me. There’s something telling my body that it’s time for a Siesta. Perhaps it’s the digestion process. Perhaps this is when the caffeine injection from the morning wears off. Regardless of the reason, I work in the United States, where mid-workday naps are not looked upon favorably. So instead of giving in to the temptation, I stand up, walk around for a minute, find a brief distraction to wake me up, and then head back to my desk to finish the workday.

In an office full of software developers, you

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How to Blog for SEO

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As a CMS provider, we believe there’s nothing more important than a good content strategy for driving traffic to your website and building credibility with your readers--whether they’re potential students or sales prospects. And an important part of any content strategy is SEO, or Search Engine Optimization. Therefore, when you write blog posts for your organization, you should always consider the SEO ramifications, and even plan for them.

Here’s what I’ve learned about how to blog for SEO:

Create a Search Engine-friendly URL

If you’re using Cascade Server, then each page is automatically given a search engine

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The Publishing Problem Checklist

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Publishing Problem ChecklistEvery once in a while I’ll have a client or a colleague report to me that they are having difficulty publishing an asset (or assets) from Cascade Server.  Given the flexibility of the application, problems like this can stem from a variety of different settings.  The next time you attempt to track down a publishing problem for yourself (or one of your Users), step through the following checklist for the best chance of staying sane:

Is the Asset publishable?
This seems like a no-brainer, but you’ve got to start somewhere.  Check the System pane and make sure that the option to Include when publishingis selected

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The Year of Content and Content Strategy

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As a CMS provider, our top priority is to empower organizations to create and maintain their websites as easily and efficiently as possible. There is nothing more powerful and effective that you can do to generate more traffic to your site, to engage your target audience, and to increase your web marketing ROI than to provide fresh, relevant, and valuable content that is both shareable and share-worthy. Forbes.com recently labeled the year 2012 “The year of content”. We would like to take it a step further and hope that 2012 will also become the “Year of Content Strategy”.

Why?

You’ve already made an

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Cross-Browser Javascript Development Lessons and Tips

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Over the past several months here at Hannon Hill, I’ve gotten to work on more projects to increase my exposure to Javascript development and I've learned some really helpful tips for cross-browser testing. Prior to working here, I worked on a Swing-based thin client, so most of my Javascript exposure was from personal projects. Six months ago, I decided to push myself by volunteering for a Javascript-heavy project: the Twitter Feed Block. After a week of development, testing my prototype in Internet Explorer showed that it didn’t work at all.

Last month, I worked on another Javascript-heavy project, and in addition to normal QA,

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Best Practices for Cross-Site Sharing

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So You’re Moving To Sites? Best Practices when Cross-Site Sharing

Cascade Server 6 0 introduced a revolutionary game changer into the content management system: Sites A unique and efficient way of segmenting, categorizing, and structuring your website A Site in Cascade Server works as an entity unto itself – complete with its own folder structure and administrative assets We’re talking wholly unique, completely separated and distinct areas Mind Blown Think of the possibilities at play here – you can have distinct organizations all updating their own sites at the same time within the same system all pushing their

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Social Media Directories

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Over the last few years, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn have clearly emerged as the giants of social media. But many of the more specialized and niche social media platforms also have a very large audience, and most social media-embracing organizations have adopted one or more of these non-core social networks.

Last month, hundreds of universities claimed their Google+ brand pages. Last week Emory posted a link to their Pinterest pinboard, complete with student photos, an Emory Christmas ornament, and other interesting finds from around the web And today, over a dozen of the higher education clients we follow on Twitter posted new

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Hannon Hill's Resolutions for 2012

  • Commentary

2011 treated us well here at Hannon Hill. We released two major upgrades to Cascade Server, which contained some of the most requested features from our Idea Exchange. We rolled out our new company website, hosted our best user conference to date, welcomed many new clients, and added some great new people to our team. We are thankful for an amazing year, and even more excited about 2012. Some of our resolutions include, but are not limited to:

  • Get more people trained on Cascade Server. As Penny Harding, our Services Manager, announced, we are determined to expand your training options even further. That’s why we are now offering free monthly Cascade Server Bootcamps

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Happy New Year from Hannon Hill: Top 10 2011 Blog Posts

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  • Events

Here, here, here, the best time of the year! As we quickly approach 2012, I wanted to use this last post of the year to wish all our clients a Happy New Year and to share the blog posts from 2011 that got the most reads this year (and a few festive holiday photos...).

In the spririt of the New Year's Eve countdown, here are the top 10 most popular non-user conference posts, with number one being the most read. I should acknowledge that posts published earlier in the year do have an obvious advantage here, but nonetheless, here they are:

10. 5 CMS Predictions for 2012, by Kat Liendgens (December 8)

9.  Spotlight on Cascade Entity Relationship Diagram

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