Belmont Webmaster's Journal: Building news fires and keeping the old fires going

It is great that our web owners (and you know who you are) care enough to work on their portions of the www.belmont.edu site on a regular basis. Not a single day goes by when something doesn't change on our web site and that is part of being associated with a university that is alive and growing. We are rapidly approaching the day when the content on the current site will be moved over into the Hannon Hill content management system. I wish that I could give you an exact date, but it will happen between now and June 23rd.

There are three things that will happen during the transition...and here is the plan:

The current www.belmont.edu site will be available for editing using the tools you are currently using until August 8, 2006. That is the projected date for launching the new look and the complete move to Hannon Hill for site development and maintenance.
Whenever your site is pulled over into Hannon Hill (and we will notify you when that happens), you must make any content changes in two places: on the current www.belmont.edu site AND on the revised site in Hannon Hill. We expect the duplicate editing requirement to run for about four to five weeks while users are training and working in the new content management system.
During the period from June 23rd until August 8th, our concentration will be on the conversion of existing content, training new users, and deploying upgraded software applications necessary for the function of the new site. We would prefer to delay launching any new directories (web sites) during that period. Any new sites during this period should be created using Hannon Hill's application with an anticipated launch sometime after the August 8th launch of the new site.

This is a bit of a juggling game. We cannot stop the world or the active pace of the university while we make a major transition to new look and new delivery system. The old fires need to keep burning while we build new fires in the background. We do ask for your patience and support for the transition plan...yes, it will be inconvenient and a pain, but we are confident that the end result is the right move for the university.