In Content Management – Part 2 I spoke about the importance training everyone involved in content management in your organisation. The next important step is to ensure you set standards.
By setting standards you will ensure that before anyone is let loose on your website(s) they have a baseline understanding and if they don’t conform you have a set of regulations to refer them to.
Editorial Board
First of all consider setting up an Editorial Board that oversees all work on your website, sets standards, makes recommendations and central decisions on future direction. Once your CMS is embedded no doubt there will be requirements for add-ons or common applications. Don’t let all your hard work become undone by allowing people to do their own thing as it’s the start of a slippery slope. An Editorial Board should not stem innovation or creativity but it should set the boundaries and promote enthusiasm through endorsement and publicity.
Have regular meetings, once a month should suffice and ensure all of your key stakeholders are part of this group. It’s essential to get the right mix of people from those focused solely on your business objectives to the most IT literate.
Guidance
Ok so staff are trained an Editorial Board is in place, now can you start? No! There are at least 3 key policies you need to set in place.
1. Web Publising Policy – Whether it’s a central policy or by business area do make sure you have a publishing policy in place. All users should be clear on the dos and don’ts before they publish information on your website. It may be that some of these rules are governed by other policies or legislation, for example FOI, others may be part of your corporate standards. The level of granularity is entirely down to you but the more detailed your publishing policy is the harder it will be to maintain and get buy in from users. Keep it at a fairly high level so that it covers a wide range of topics but won’t become dated in a weeks time, becoming a tedious chore to enforce and adhere to.
2. Web Standards – As someone who champions accessibility and usability, web standards are close to my heart. If you have no awareness of web standards there are reams and reams of information on the web
so clue yourself in and set a standard. Aim for the highest possible within your resources and if there’s a lack of expertise in your organisation, consider buying it in (contact me!). Once you have that expertise, have those standards at hand for all of your users, from designers and developers to content providers and content authors. In the NICS we have such standards and as these were written over 4 years ago, I’m currently redrafting these. Web standards should not just be about accessibility and the WCAG. Also think about Style and Tone. When should users upload PDFs, how long should web pages be, how are those common terms, names etc spelt? These are just some of the issues you need to address when developing a Style and Tone guide.
3. Audit – When we think of audit we usually think of those people who question everything we do, this is perhaps your most invaluable service. Often underestimated and usually not liked, an audit process keeps everything in check, ensures everyone is playing by the rules and gives you the comfort of knowing that if any awkward questions are asked, you have the answers at hand. In the NICS I audit all new websites before they go live against WAI AA standards. Reports are produced using a traffic light system and Departments take responsibility for addressing issues. Before any site is permitted to go live it must meet at least WAI A standards, be cross browser compatible and adhere to corporate standards. By doing this we know we are legal, we know everyone is at least meeting baseline standards and although we’re not in competition, we know we are ahead of our counterparts.
So that concludes part 3, I could expand on the issues above, I could mention the need for corporate standards but if you want your CMS to succeed, your website to succeed and most of all, your staff to succeed then these are the minimum procedures you must put in place.
