City Of East Lansing DotNetNuke Implementation
- 1. www.cityofeastlansing.comThe Goals, Challenges & Implementation of a Modern Municipal Website with DotNetNuke
- 2. BackgroundCollaborative effortThe existing site was originally designed in 2001Its technology and capabilities were quite datedIt was built using asp. I decided that DNN was the platform we would move to.East Lansing is a City with 46,000 citizens and encompasses a university with roughly 45 thousand students
- 3. Original East Lansing Site
- 4. Goals - OverviewThe most Critical goals were theseTo outline The Lookwe were hoping forTo define the Navigation schemeTo develop a Content Management system that would satisfy the needs of the many content editorsTo verify that we had The Tools to achieve specific functionality
- 5. Goals - The LookModern without becoming quickly datedWe wanted to avoid the popular for a day features like the web 2.0 shiny affects.Friendly & UnclutteredWe scoured the Web looking for examples but finding quality examples of Municipal was difficult.Many Municipal sites looked either inept, dated industrial, or clutteredCommunity FocusedWe wanted a look that reflected the character our community.Strong use of Local Photos
- 7. Our Goals - NavigationIntuitive We worked to ensure that the navigation was simple and connected to our designSemantic Navigation was built around the following CriteriaUser Background, Page Popularity, Services, DepartmentsConsistentThe navigation for a section of the website remains the same as you move through that sectionSecondary Navigation allows you to reach related sub-sectionsPowerful toolsTabs, limited Dropdowns, AJAX Search, Sitemap, & URL Manager
- 8. Inside Pages
- 9. Our Goals – Content ManagementThoroughCompletely thorough Content Management is achievable but I wanted to push it as far as I could.Minimize the time & technical knowledge needed to make updatesI believe that people working on the web should be open to training. This helps them avoid technical issues and it elevates the content quality of your site. Still the tools should be intuitive and help them to avoid mistakes.Daily updates should be the simplestNews Releases, FrontPage Features, Calendar Events, BlogsAvoid redundant entryContent Editors shouldn’t need to update multiple pages with the same information
- 10. Windows Live Writer & MetaPostEntering a News ItemSelect Articles, or blogs
- 12. Our Goals – The ToolsFunctionally CompleteNews ReleasesCalendars & EventsCity MapsDowntown Business ProfilesFile Management (Minutes & Agendas)BlogsPhoto GalleriesElectronic NewslettersAnalytics
- 13. News Releases
- 14. Maps and Blogs
- 16. The ChallengesCreating a skin to match our graphic designJavascript to –Load background images based on site sectionsLoad Panelbar Manage MenusModule Updates –Tweaks to Telerik Menu to Set New Parent MenuCalendar Satellite Module with Date PickerDNNStuff Aggregator & Ventrian New Articles - RSS Feature
- 17. Mapping out content & creating a sitemap
- 18. File ManagementBring2Mind - Document Exchange is used for general file management Bring2Mind - Adapter module is used to manage meeting minutes and agenda filesWe also use Ventrian Filelinks module to give users access to upload files to specific directories
- 19. Events ManagementInvenmanager Calendar was selected for events management but was missing key functionalityAggregated CalendarsThe ability to create exceptions for recurring eventsDate selector for the Satellite module
- 20. What Modules to UseVentrianChild LinksSimple GalleryNews ArticlesFile LinksInvenManagerCalendarDNNStuffAggregatorBring2MindDocument ExchangeSatelliteZLDNN Module WrapperJetKeySmartMapEZModuleNetism Satellite FreeGumbosoftContent RotatorDataspringsOpt-in EmailIIT SitemapEvoticaBackup NativeIfinityURL Master & windows 2008AnalyticsMetapostTelerikMenu & PanelbarDNNHTMLBlogIframe
Editor's Notes
- #2: Early 2008 the City of East Lansing set out to Redo our website.We spent a significant amount of time trying to determine what exactly that meant.Our current site was successful but very dated. We needed to decide what exactly we wanted to change and what we wanted to keep.We finally set out a number of goals that would help us to define our new site.
- #5: There were a huge number of factors to consider but these four were among the most significant
- #6: We wanted to avoid the popular for a day features like the web 2.0 shiny affects.Finding examples of Municipal sites that we liked was difficult.Many Municipal sites look either inept, dated industrial, or clutteredWe wanted a look that reflected well on our community.With between 1 and 2 thousand pages it is difficult to avoid link overload.Our goal was to create a design that would complement the navigation.
- #8: We integrated navigation based on many CriteriaUser backgroundPage PopularityServicesDepartmentalWe utilized a number of techniques to accomplish our goalsTabs to categorize information & NavigationLimited use of dropdown menus (One Level)AJAX SearchSimple URL’sSitemapURL Manager
- #10: I don’t think completely thorough Content Management is achievable but I wanted to push it as far as I could.I have generally believed that people working on the web should be open to training. This helps them avoid technical issues and it helps elevate the content quality of your site. Still the tools should be intuitive and help them to avoid mistakes.We focused significant effort to simplify the daily updates.Where possible we tried to ensure that information didn’t need to be created redundantly. When a News Release is created all pertinent pages are updated.
- #13: We spent a significant amount of time working to ensure that the tools we implemented would be robust and able to satisfy our needs.There is one true fact with software.It will never be functionally complete.We worked with many vendors to improve their modules.Some voluntarily added or modified features for us and we sponsored others that were time critical or more difficult.Honestly I will say that many module developers that made those improvements found there sale increasing significantly.