Engineering quick, relevant content

The Institution of Engineers Australia provides a range of benefits, facilities and services to its 60,000 members. And because it is member-funded, it needs to deliver those benefits efficiently and cost effectively. That’s why the group became concerned a year ago with the poor navigability of its Web site, and turned to Australian IT services company Stepsoft to redesign the site and examine its content management system (CMS).

The existing CMS had been custom built for the Institution and designed to maintain Web pages in a server-resident database. Many of the organization’s 50 content authors had complained about its complexity and about the delay between page submission and migration to the “live” Web site. Because pages had to be approved and migrated by the Web site administrator, a single bottleneck had been created in the authoring process.

To encourage content authors to keep their content current, Stepsoft decided that the new content management system had to be easy and timely to use. It also should:

• provide secure, individual edit access to Web site content for multiple content authors;

• be used by a variety of content authors with a range of skill sets, rather than assuming experience in HTML;

• allow for the definition of page “templates” to provide a uniform look and feel across the site by restricting content authors to changes in content, not page design;

• run on Windows NT or Unix-based servers and be accessible to Windows, Macintosh and Unix-based client-side workstations;

• not require the purchase of specialized client-side software on content author systems; and

• provide authors with the ability to publish changes in a timely manner.

  Stepsoft eventually recommended the Revize Content Authoring System from Idetix, which could be bought off the shelf to meet the Web publishing needs of the Institution of Engineers. The system was installed on a Windows NT-based 350-mHz Pentium server hosting the site via Microsoft IIS.

  According to Stepsoft, the implementation was straightforward and smooth, and defining new modules and templates is easy for anyone with HTML and basic IT/programming skills. Content authors are said to learn easily how to access the modules to which they have publishing rights, and to add/delete/edit records to make immediate changes to content on the live Web site.

  The Institution of Engineers Australia is pleased with the functionality and ease of use of the new system, according to Stepsoft. The group’s Web site now has a consistent look and feel, as well as content that is relevant and timely.