The Challenge
Kuwait University has currently around 60 websites (sites of 16 colleges, academic departments, supporting departments, centers, offices, and units). These websites are under the umbrella of KU domain (i.e. ku.edu.kw) and that number is expected to grow steadily in the coming years.
Most of these websites are based on scattered and individual departmental efforts which reflect directly on the loss and weakness of the unified look among the whole body of Kuwait University web site. As a consequence the individual web sites differ in look, content and structure. The branding of Kuwait University as a single strong educational entity depends heavily on the web sites unification and standardization.
The Solution
Microsystems LLC (MSC) understand the core challenges of the required multi-site management:
- Organizations create and manage numerous websites - for example, departmental intranets, extranets, and local and international versions of their external websites.
- Organizations need to retain centralized control of branding, security and infrastructure, while giving the business units the freedom to create, manage and customize their own Websites to meet their specific needs.
- Without proper tools, non-technical business users are forced to learn technical applications to author, edit or approve website content.
- The responsibility for site ownership remains at the corporate level, creating a classic webmaster bottleneck resulting in outdated content and endless delays.
MSC has integrated and implemented Oracle Web Center Content Management solution specifically targeted at the multi-site challenge. MSC also provided three templates for the colleges and centers to adopt. Those designs conforms to websites UI and security recommendations and guidelines.
The Results
KU’s websites are enhanced, unified and standardized in terms of content, structure, and navigation models, plus website’s look and feel as well as unified the KU Web environment by integration with KU Portal.
The WCM implementation resulted with the following:
- Centralized control of site architecture, navigation and presentation;
- Distributed actual site development, deployment and ongoing management to the business users;
- Provided content authors the ability to easily add, modify and approve content within the context of their websites;
- Provided a framework that is critical when managing multiple websites.
