Web Services
The Web Services team provides ongoing web server maintenance,
web site maintenance, and page creation for the main Butler web
site. We assist Butler University colleges, departments and
administrative offices achieve their electronic communication
goals. In addition to providing project management and development
resources for standard Web site applications, our team offers
consultation for information architecture planning, Umbraco CMS
training, business process analysis and other Internet related
services.
Recent Projects
The Web Services team has been working closely with the Web
Marketing team of University Relations for the past 12 months
migrating all 150+ college, department and administrative websites
that reside under the main www.butler.edu website. Prior to the
migration itself, Web Services spent months determining what
direction the University needed to go with the management of its
Web presence. Much research and deliberation went into the decision
to replace the "homegrown" system (known as webSnap) with an open
source CMS known as Umbraco. Since then, both teams have been
working diligently to move each website into the new CMS, including
steps such as:
- Studying and implementing the system
- Meeting with Umbraco developers to gain insight into its
capabilities
- Obtaining Umbraco certification
- Mapping out a migration plan
- Meeting with various faculty, staff and students to plan
individual content migrations
- Preparing training materials
- Hosting training sessions
- Refining the CMS for Butler's needs
- Developing "macros" (plug-ins, widgets) for the system to
simplify complex functionality
Being a "Microsoft shop," Web Services determined that a CMS
framework written in Microsoft .NET, like Umbraco, would be best
suited to serving Butler's needs. The open Umbraco .NET framework
allows Web Services to easily develop miniature applications
(macros, widgets) that perform common functions required by Butler
websites (video, audio, forms, etc.) and enable the University to
place the management of content directly into the hands of those
who know their content best: colleges, departments and offices.
Staff