CSCF Website to WCMS

Table of Contents

Project Objective: Purpose

The purpose is to design and implement a new public-facing CSCF website in the campus Web Content Management System. It will follow campus design principles, and contain new and revised content that will be useful to our clients.

Project Scope/Deliverables

The high-level outcomes of this project are as follows:

• identification of all requirements
• specification of a scope and timeline for Fall 2018, when we will go live.
  • what features are critical
  • what features will be useful to add later
• implementation of a site map of the new site
• implementation of a site map of the old site, including:
  • planned redirects to the new site to replace old pages
  • pass-through exceptions so certain old content (eg., dynamic URLs, internal data) will be visible at the same URLs
• a functional site on pilots.uwaterloo.ca which will be QA tested and brought live by IST

Scope Includes/Excludes

Includes

• Investigation includes discussion with end-users
• Site includes information for Grad Students, Faculty, Researchers, Visitors, Staff and Undergraduates
• Site includes a client-focused Service Catalog, based on Higher Education best-practice standards
• Making available links to necessary documentation
• Apache reverse-proxy to make the new site (uwaterloo.ca/cscf) available at cs.uwaterloo.ca/cscf
  • Reverse-proxy exceptions so necessary old pages can continue to function

Excludes

This project doesn't include (re-)implementing the following, but in all cases, this project does include preserving links to the following, if they are to be documented in our public-facing site.

• Internal CSCF pages
• Non-CSCF external documentation on our servers, eg., CS teaching materials, IST documentation
• Dynamic pages and apps (other than feedback forms which are supported by the WCMS)
• Skinning old CSCF pages in HTML and CSS to look like the WCMS- that is a separate project mostly for dynamic sites, headed up by Isaac.

Constraints

• We must keep track of existing content that people look for
  • Site map and server logs of old site will give us useful information about existing pages that are referenced and accessed
  • Client discussions will hopefully fill in additional details for what people are looking for (and find or don't find)

Assumptions and Risks

• Assumption that we can identify the most important client needs via research, server logs, site maps, and discussions with clients.
• Assumption that our content will be written in accessible campus-standard ways
  • For example: writing short paragraphs and pages, rather than long pages in exhaustive detail that people will skip
  • Risk that we fall afoul of Quality Assurance by IST for using too many acronyms or other issues, delaying deployment.
• Risk that we fall down a rabbit-hole of "this data is important, but that relies on having data from this other person, which relies on still another set of data, and what's the optimal way to get that data" through the Fall 2018 term

Project Members

drallen (project manager), lfolland, omnafees, dlgawley

Project Stakeholders

CS Faculty, Grad Students, Researchers, Visitors, Staff and Undergraduates

Project Sponsor

Martin Karsten (through August 2018) / Ken Salem (Fall 2018 term)

RT

• /RT#672666

See also

Implementation Plan

• 2018-08
• 2018-09

Meeting Notes

-- DanielAllen - 2018-08-16