Migrating Your Website to the CMS

Web Liaison and Author training will begin in Summer 2008. All content owners will be responsible for evaluating their department's website content and preparing it for migration before training.

Prior to training, the following tasks must be completed.

  1. Determine the purpose and audience of your website
    • Define the purpose of your website in 1-2 sentences. For example, the purpose might be to suppy information on your department or program or, your site may be to encourage students to participate in an activity or specific action. Another possible function would be to serve as a "portal" or a collection of links to other sites on the web pertaining to a particular topic.
    • Definte the main audience for your site: students, faculty, staff, businesses etc.
  2. Ensure your content is "web ready" - WRITING FOR THE WEB IS DIFFERENT THAN WRITING FOR PRINT!
    • Use short sentences and short paragraphs. Web readers are impatient and mostly skim the page.
    • Highlight important text in bold
    • Use short, direct headings on your pages
    • Use subheads every few paragraphs to keep readers apprised of the content
    • Do not just copy an entire print brochure and call it a website!
  3. Organize your content
    • Keep your main menu short and to the point (no more than 10 menu items).
      • Categorize pages under sub-menu items to keep from overloading visitors.
    • Create an outline (download sample) or flow chart (download sample) of all the pages in your site. Save as a Microsoft Word document.
    • Ensure information vital to your site's purpose is easily found and not buried deep inside the site.
  4. Create a Microsoft Word document of all website content
    • Include all text and links
  5. Edit your content
    • Spellcheck and grammar check your content. Have a colleague double check it.
  6. Gather Graphics
    • Collect any images and graphics in digital form that you'd like to include. Burn them to a CD or place on a USB Flash drive.
  7. Verify you have access to the MSU NET Account. Web trainers will not be able to provide you with this account and you will need to log in to the CMS system using this username and password. Contact the Help Desk for more information - 443.885.HELP (Ext. 4357).

You will be required to bring your outline or flow chart and content document in Microsoft Word format (on CD or Flash drive) to the training. Without these documents, you will not be admitted to the training class.