Creating a New Agency Web Site

I’m working on our new agency web-site. Actually I’ve been working on it for quite some time now – it’s a monster of a site with tons of content.

Here’s my work in progress: http://djfs.co.seneca.oh.us/cmsmadesimple/. Nothing really Web 2.0 about it, we’re still focused on the Web 1.0 stuff. And, yes, this is a difficult to remember URL, but when the site is live “senecadjfs.org” will take you to there.

Technology:
The site is being developed on top of the free and open source CMSMadeSimple content management system. This system makes it easy to add pages, and to update the look and feel of the site. We’ve installed several CMSMadeSimple modules like Album, Company Directory, Form Builder, and News to help manage the content. CMSMadeSimple also includes the ability to create Global Content Blocks and User Defined Tags which helps us share application procedures and eligibility criteria across programs.

Things done right:
I’ve been pleased our choice of CMSMadeSimple for the content management system.

I think we had a really good kick-off meeting with the Administrators explaining the kind of information I was looking for. Here’s the document I used to guide the discussion in that meeting: Web Site Organization.pdf. As a result of the meeting we were able to generate a new site-map for the content (based on our custmer’s needs), and it provides a good reference when I’m not getting the content or information I need to build the site.

Things I’m struggling with:
The sites has a lot of content and it’s difficult to find time in the day to add that content. We probably should have give more thought in the beginning to a phased roll-out of the content.