www.cityofeastlansing.com

The Goals, Challenges & Implementation of a Modern Municipal Website with DotNetNuke

Background Collaborative effort The existing site was originally designed in

2001 Its technology and capabilities were quite

dated It was built using asp. I decided that DNN was the platform we would

move to. East Lansing is a City with 46,000 citizens and

encompasses a university with roughly 45 thousand students

Original East Lansing Site

Goals - Overview

The most Critical goals were these To outline The Look we were hoping for

To define the Navigation scheme

To develop a Content Management system that would satisfy the needs of the many content editors

To verify that we had The Tools to achieve specific functionality

Goals - The Look

Modern without becoming quickly dated We wanted to avoid the popular for a day features

like the web 2.0 shiny affects. Friendly & Uncluttered

We scoured the Web looking for examples but finding quality examples of Municipal was difficult.

Many Municipal sites looked either inept, dated industrial, or cluttered

Community Focused We wanted a look that reflected the character

our community. Strong use of Local Photos

The FrontPage

Our Goals - Navigation

Intuitive We worked to ensure that the navigation was simple and

connected to our design Semantic

Navigation was built around the following Criteria User Background, Page Popularity, Services, Departments

Consistent The navigation for a section of the website remains the

same as you move through that section Secondary Navigation allows you to reach related sub-

sections Powerful tools

Tabs, limited Dropdowns, AJAX Search, Sitemap, & URL Manager

Inside Pages

Our Goals – Content Management

Thorough Completely thorough Content Management is achievable

but I wanted to push it as far as I could. Minimize the time & technical knowledge needed to

make updates I believe that people working on the web should be open

to training. This helps them avoid technical issues and it elevates the content quality of your site. Still the tools should be intuitive and help them to avoid mistakes.

Daily updates should be the simplest News Releases, FrontPage Features, Calendar Events, Blogs

Avoid redundant entry Content Editors shouldn’t need to update multiple pages

with the same information

Windows Live Writer & MetaPost

Entering a News ItemSelect Articles, or blogs

Event Calendars

Invenmanager Calendar Satellite Module

Our Goals – The Tools

Functionally Complete News Releases Calendars & Events City Maps Downtown Business Profiles File Management (Minutes & Agendas) Blogs Photo Galleries Electronic Newsletters Analytics

News Releases

Maps and Blogs

Managing Meeting Minutes

The Challenges Creating a skin to match our graphic design

Javascript to – Load background images based on site sections Load Panelbar Manage Menus

Module Updates – Tweaks to Telerik Menu to Set New Parent Menu Calendar Satellite Module with Date Picker DNNStuff Aggregator & Ventrian New Articles - RSS

Feature

Mapping out content & creating a sitemap

File Management Bring2Mind - Document Exchange is used for

general file management Bring2Mind - Adapter module is used to

manage meeting minutes and agenda files We also use Ventrian Filelinks module to give

users access to upload files to specific directories

Events Management

Invenmanager Calendar was selected for events management but was missing key functionality Aggregated Calendars The ability to create exceptions for recurring

events Date selector for the Satellite module

What Modules to Use Ventrian

Child Links Simple Gallery News Articles File Links

InvenManager Calendar DNNStuff Aggregator Bring2Mind

Document Exchange Satellite

ZLDNN Module Wrapper JetKey SmartMap EZModule Netism Satellite Free

Gumbosoft Content Rotator Datasprings Opt-in Email IIT Sitemap Evotica Backup Native Ifinity

URL Master & windows 2008

Analytics Metapost Telerik Menu & Panelbar DNN

HTML Blog Iframe