The Woes of Changing Direction
Changing direction on a long-term project is never easy. Not only do we need to learn new things, but just switching a long held mindset can often be anything by easy.
This is where I stand right now with our primary website at work (http://www.aviation.siu.edu). I have been actively developing this site on my own for about 10 years with some very basic concepts. First, there was no direction from anyone in the department. This means that in everything from features to server configuration and more I had free control over it all. Heck, I couldn’t even get a critique if I begged for it. I know to some this might not seem like a problem, and for years it hasn’t been to me. What is a problem is that with only one person working unguided on a site of 1000’s of pages it can lead to numerous unused features and an administration that is slow to react with trends in online marketing. Second, I’ve been designing and redesigning a custom content management system for the site since the beginning. This also has never really been a problem, but combined with no direction it has lead to a system with little documentation and virtually no connection to other common systems users our familiar with such as Wordpress and others.
Now things are changing. The administration in our department has realized that putting all its advertising money into magazine ads isn’t the most efficient use of their budget. Consequently they are turning their sites to the web. Although I haven’t been officially asked to do anything (and still find very little guidance as to their vision) I recognize this shift in ideology and know that I need to work to making the most use of our advertising budget and at the same time work to redesign not only our site, but much of our entire marketing strategy.
So where do I start? First I realize that I cannot do everything by myself if for no other reason that a second person can see things I cannot. Consequently I am getting help from a small team I’ve put together. Although beneficial, at the airport this is quite a change in philosophy and like any such change requires a little getting used to (I must say that of everything that’s changing, a team is the most positive change for both me and the department as I like working in teams normally). Second, although the CMS I have used is nice, there is a lot of good open-source products on the market now that provide the features we need as well as excellent documentation and other features making it easy to incorporate information from more sources.
Putting this all together has left me with quite a headache. Stepping back from 10 years of one direction and refocusing on a new one has not been easy at all. The good thing however is that I realize when it’s done we will have a better product for the entire SIU Aviation community (even though it might take a little longer than I originally hoped).
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Posted in Personal, Web and Social Media | 
Tags: CMS, content management, design, getting started, internet, Personal, Web and Social Media
