William Jewell College

Case Studies

About

William Jewell College, founded in 1849, has shown great achievement in the education of liberal arts. In 2001, Jewell was recognized as the “Liberal Arts College of the Year” by TIME Magazine. Jewell is located 20 minutes from downtown Kansas City, perched above the historic town of Liberty, Missouri. Alumni are among the most accomplished citizens in the world, and are regularly profiled in the College’s award-winning quarterly magazine.
 

Client Requirements

Jewell’s website serves as a portal to connect the college with potential and existing students, faculty, staff, and alumni. The school’s current website is composed of over 750 pages. Jewell needed a system that could efficiently and effectively manage their web content, event registrations, alumni information, and online giving under one solution umbrella.
 

Solution

Due to existing success in the area of content management for other large academic institutions, William Jewell chose AllofE to develop and implement an enterprise level solution to manage all of their web based content. The goal of implementing ContentM is to utilize the following:
 
  • Content Management System that is web based with no client computer software installation requirements.
  • Portable system that works across platforms, browsers, and technical environments.
  • Conversion of existing website pages and templates.
  • Security with multiple access levels for administrators, faculty, staff and end users.
  • Interfaces that allow for users with absolutely no technical knowledge to manage site content.
  • Database driven system that allows for the storage and utilization of content.
  • Scalable solution that expands with their content management needs.
  • Time frame for full implementation that is less than six weeks from the start of the project.
  • Ability to host their own site.
  • WYSIWYG Rich Text Editor to manage all look and feel aspects of the site.
  • Template editor to create and manage a consistent look and feel across the entire site and sections within the site.
  • Ability to design and manage the site’s menu structure.
  • Automatic generation of site maps, searches, and menus.
  • Administrative tools for site wide spell checking, link validating, and search and replace.
  • Scalable system with the ability to integrate with other solutions such as alumni management, event registration, online giving, room scheduling, and calendaring
 

Effect

William Jewell selected AllofE’s ContentM, which eliminated IT bottlenecks by empowering non-technical content creators and other users with the ability to update site content themselves. Through the Rich Text Editor interface, users of any technical level were able to manage web content and allowed an organization to disperse content management responsibility throughout its departments. Since William Jewell wanted to maintain the same image as their existing website, AllofE web designers replicated the William Jewell site’s look and feel through ContentM’s template manager. System developers imported in all of the site’s web page content as well as menu structure and layout. AllofE data managers worked directly with the William Jewell website and technical managers to ensure the viability of over 750 pages of website content. Network and server technicians configured and implemented the system on William Jewell’s server. Jewell’s technical managers were provided with ContentM’s template editor functionality which allowed them to quickly review and finalize the look and feel of the site’s pages, add images and links to an infinite number of pages at a time, and perform mass updates of outdated content from their previous site. The AllofE and Jewell team accomplished all of this and in less than 6 weeks after the project’s initiation date the website went live powered by ContentM. With ContentM, the school benefited from one centralized site management interface; user friendly functionality so that anyone could update the content; and tools such as site wide spell checking and link validating ensured content accuracy. ContentM provided William Jewell College with a web based tool to that allowed easy and efficient management of content and kept their site up to date and accurate while effectively communicating to their key information users such as students, alumni, faculty, and staff.