Hold off on CP site redesigns
October 21, 2007 in Websites
I’ve gotten a couple of queries from people who were looking to do some major changes to their web site designs or hosting in recent weeks, and I thought it would be good to put my advice here on the blog for anyone else who’s got similar questions. #
The first question is related to redesign. Web site redesigns should occur at least as often as you redesign your print edition. After all, we are learning far more about how the web is changing now, and current trends are away from some of the design ideas that traditional news web sites might take for granted. That said, if you’re on College Publisher, you should hold off on any major site redesigns for a while. #
Why? CP is supposed to be coming out with a totally rebuilt content management system in the next few months. I don’t know all the details, but I know that it’s going to be a MAJOR restructuring of their back-end support for college news sites. If you redesign your site now, you’ll be back tweaking things in a few months when this new back-end system comes on line. I’d suggest holding off on your big site redesign until the new system is up. #
The second question was related in a way, but someone wanted to know my suggestions about moving off of College Publisher onto a hosted content management system. They were somewhat frustrated with the design possibilities of the CP content management system, and wanted to know what was a better system. My suggestion was the same. Hold off on moving away from CP until the new CMS comes out. If it comes out, and you don’t like it, then you can look at other solutions. But unless you’re just totally dissatisfied with everything, hold off until you see what the new system has to offer. #
I’ll be at the CMA/ACP convention in Washington, DC next week and hope to talk to Chris Gillon about the new system in more detail. For the time being, though, my advice is to bide your time. Use the extra time you have to think about ways to really improve that new site design beyond the basics. #
Bryan makes some good points, but I'll just say that for a student editor who has only a year, or in some cases only a semester, to make changes, you should probably go ahead and do what you want to do changing your site now.
The new CP system won't be available until sometime after the start of 2008, and I don't know how fast it will be rolled out to papers across their network. (This isn't a push-one-button-and-everyone-is-updated change; it's a change which will require some work to migrate each site.) Depending how solid the new system is, how many bugs or delays CP hits, I'd figure at least February, and possibly later for most papers. CP may have more info on their timteable for us this week in DC, but meanwhile, I'd say that if you're not content with your current site design for the next 5-6 months, go ahead and make the changes you want to make now. In the web world, layered on top of the student media world, that's a long time to wait in order to make improvements to your site.
Good points, eric, but I don't see it as a short-term gain for the site to go through a redesign just to have to wrangle with a new backend. I've heard the early 2008 estimates, as well. But at some point, it becomes a point of diminishing returns, IMHO. If you have huge problems, then the problem really isn't the backend, but a larger issue that isn't going to be resolved in a semester. Sure, it'll look good on a resume, but is it really what you want to do for the organization?
These are deep questions. I really hope to get some better insight from CP this week. If my rumors are correct, then the CMS they are implementing will be more than capable of supporting all the college media sites currently on the system. still, it's going to be a headache to do one redesign, then another.