Mobilizing 300 Reluctant
Content Creators

Brian DeConinck

NC State OIT Design

@BrianDeConinck

@oitdesign

  ·  

  ·  

View These Slides: go.ncsu.edu/wcbos-2017

My Story*

A story of...

• Development

• Content Strategy

• Multisite Administration

• Governance

• Politics

• Heartbreak

• Frustration

• Triumph???

* Not 100% accurate

Some details skipped or misrepresented for time and ease of storytelling.

A quick comment about

Moral of the Story

Part 1:
Background
(Getting To Know NC State)

NC State is
Big & Decentralized

• Lots of colleges + high-level units
   
• All responsible for their own web presence, hiring their own web team

(This is an incomplete list!)

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences

College of Design

College of Education

College of Engineering

College of Humanities and Social Sciences

College of Natural Resources

Poole College of Management

College of Sciences

College of Textiles

College of Veterinary Medicine

The Graduate School

Division of Academic and Student Affairs

Office of Research, Innovation, and Economic Development

Office of Finance and Administration

Office of Information Technology

Office of Global Engagement

Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity

Institute for Advanced Analytics

PowerAmerica Institute

Nonwovens Institute

OIT Design

Part of central IT

What We Do

• General-use themes & plugins for campus
• Custom themes & plugins
• WordPress & content best practices training
• Information architecture consulting
• Usability testing
• Help with complex page formatting in WP
• Manage campus WordPress multisites
• Contract management for single-site installations
• Tier 2/3 support for campus web hosting

Partial cost-recovery model

Read: We're cheap + give a lot of stuff away for free

Web team for hire

OIT Design

What We Don't Do

• Own your website

Part of central IT

Partial cost-recovery model

Read: We're cheap + give a lot of stuff away for free

Web team for hire

What does "Website Ownership" mean?

We'll help run your website, but you're still responsible for its content.

OIT Design doesn't...

• Write copy
• Decide what should be on your website
• Decide when your content needs to be updated

Part 2:
The Distant Past
(Or, 2008 – 2015)

Who owns oit.ncsu.edu?

My Answer, July 2015:

Who owns oit.ncsu.edu?

OIT Design doesn't...

• Write copy
• Decide what should be on your website
• Decide when your content needs to be updated

So who does?

• Drupal 6
   
• Built by the guy who used to have my job
   
• Owned & maintained by
  OIT Information & News Services
  (our communications team)

The Old oit.ncsu.edu

Then came the budget cuts.

OIT INS staffing gradually reduced to 1 FTE.

With limited communications staff capacity, a decision was made:

Raise your hand if
you think that plan
turns out well.

Part 3:
Things Fall Apart
(Why did anyone ever think that would work?)

If everyone owns the website,
no one owns the website.

• Website balloons to 2,576 pages
• Out-of-date, duplicate
  & inconsistent content
• Orphaned pages
• Accessibility issues (so many!)
• Things that just didn't make sense

oit.ncsu.edu/student-email-initiative

oit.ncsu.edu/student-email-initiative/test

oit.ncsu.edu/student-email-initiative/test-0

oit.ncsu.edu/student-email-initiative/test-1

All four of these were
published, live pages
that anyone could see.

Dealing with these problems would be a huge task.

No one had the time, energy, or desire to do it.

Meanwhile, the Rest of OIT Goes Rogue

Terrible oit.ncsu.edu

By July 2015, for some OIT services, there were...

1. Out-of-date pages on oit.ncsu.edu
    
2. Duplicated pages with contradictory information on oit.ncsu.ncsu
    
3. An abandoned something.ncsu.edu website containing out-of-date information that also contradicted what was on oit.ncsu.edu

oit.ncsu.edu had...
 

Lots of problems

0 website owners

300 reluctant content creators

Part 4:
Something Must Be Done
(Or, I had just been hired and thought I could fix it!)

1. Move oit.ncsu.edu to WordPress

2. Consolidate "rogue" OIT sites into a multisite

3. Give all full-time OIT staff

content creation + editing permissions

oit.ncsu.edu
Reasons for Unhappiness

Website looked dated

Out-of-date content

Confusing navigation

Fractured message

New campus brand

Wasn't mobile friendly

Drupal 6 is frustrating

Who's responsible?

Bad content

Part 5:
Making This Work
(We Hope)

When we launched the new site, I sent a unit-wide email that...

• Described the changes we had made
   
• Explained how to log into the new website
   
• Invited OIT staff to WordPress training sessions

And I thought...

I've solved the OIT website problem forever!

Raise your hand if
you think this plan
turns out well.

OIT staff attendance at WordPress sessions was... low.

Nobody in OIT actually wants to be a content creator.

Who owns oit.ncsu.edu?

My Answer, July 2015:

Everyone Else's Answer, January 2016:

Not me!

Distributed Governance Plan

OIT Design owns the service

All of OIT owns the content

What We Do

• Manage and maintain WordPress
• Custom development
• Enforce governance rules
• Provide training and support

What Everyone Else Does

• Decide when content is out-of-date
• Update content
• Create new content
• Ensure accuracy of the content

Web content liaisons identified in each
OIT department

What They Do

• Attend quarterly training sessions
• Answer basic support questions
• Escalate support and feature requests
• Identify appropriate content owners

Distributed Governance Plan

I had never written a web governance document before...

So I got help from someone who had.

Rights of an OIT User
(any visitor to an OIT website)

• Up-to-date and accurate information

• Accessible web content

• A positive and consistent user experience

Rights of an OIT Content Creator
(all OIT staff)

• Access to comprehensive documentation

• Editorial and technical support as-needed

• Access as requested to analytics and other data

Making Rules

All pages in an OIT website must...

1. Have a title
2. Have someone responsible for it
3. Be reviewed at least once a year
4. Fit into the overall information architecture
   (Read: Have an assigned parent page)

Accountability

Plugin: Content Audit
By Stephanie Leary
WPCampus Community Member

Enforcing Our Rules

Plugin: NC State Content Helper
Homegrown Plugin

GitHub Repository

Options screen to set rules as Off, Warning, or Error

Allows flexibility for enforcing best practices across multisite

var title = $("#titlewrap #title").val();

// If no title...
if ( title.length == 0 ) {

    // Display  admin notice
    failed_rules.push('title');

    if ( content_helper_options.title_rule_status == 'error' ) {
        // Prevent publish
        error_rules.push('title');
    } 
}

Failed rules detected and saved in post meta, display a warning or an error

add_action('admin_notices','ncsu_content_helper_admin_notices');
function ncsu_content_helper_admin_notices() {    
    $failed_tests = explode( ',', 
            get_post_meta( $post_id, 'failed-rules' )[0] );
    foreach ( $failed_tests as $test ) {                
        $class = 'notice notice-' . $status; // warning or error
        printf( 
            '<div class="%1$s">
                <p><strong>%2$s:</strong> %3$s</p>
            </div>', 
            $class,
            'NC State Content Helper',
            $message
        );  
    }
}

JavaScript

PHP

If a failed rule is an error, the page will be saved as a Draft

add_filter( 'save_post', 'prevent_publish' );
function prevent_publish( $post_id, $post ) {

  if ( !current_user_can( 'manage_options' ) ) {

      $prevent_publish = get_post_meta($post_id,'prevent-publish')[0];

      if ( $prevent_publish == 'true' ) {

          // unhook this function so it doesn't loop infinitely
          remove_action('save_post', 'prevent_publish');

          // update the post, which calls save_post again
          wp_update_post( 
              array('ID' => $post_id, 'post_status' => 'draft') 
          );

          // re-hook this function
          add_action('save_post', 'prevent_publish');
      }
   }
}

oit.ncsu.edu
Reasons for Unhappiness

Website looked dated

Out-of-date content

Confusing navigation

Fractured message

New campus brand

Wasn't mobile friendly

Drupal 6 is frustrating

Who's responsible?

Bad content

"Bad content" is...

• Inaccessible
   
• Poorly written
   
• Unnecessary
   
• Off-brand
  (voice and tone guidelines)

Making Content Better

Plugin: NC State Accessibility Helper
Homegrown Plugin
GitHub Repository

Metabox containing output of the_content();

add_meta_box(
    'ncsu-a11y-helper',
    'NC State Accessibility Helper',
    'ncsu_a11y_metabox',
    'page',
    'normal',
    'high'
);

function ncsu_a11y_metabox() { ?>

    // Some stuff

    <section id="annotated-content">

        <?php the_content(); ?>

    </section>

    // Some more stuff
    
<?php }

Evaluate the_content(); using aXe Accessibility Engine 
by Deque Systems

• Open source, JavaScript
• Built to avoid false positives
• Very easy to use!

var context = { include: ['#annotated-content'] }

axe.run(context, function(err, results) {

    // For each violation...
    $.each(violations, function( i, violation ) {

    var description = violation['description'];
    var help = violation['help'];
    var helpurl = violation['helpUrl'];
    var id = violation['id'];
    var impact = violation['impact'];

    // More stuff happens here on the next slide

    }

}

Highlight the detected issue and build an annotation

// Build annotation
var annotation = '<a class="a11y-annotation" href="' 
             + helpurl 
             + '" target="_blank">' 
	     + '<span class="a11y-indicator a11y-' 
             + impact 
             + '-indicator" aria-hidden="true"></span>'
	     + '<strong class="a11y-impact">' 
             + impact 
             + ':</strong> '
	     + '<span class="a11y-help">' 
             + help 
             + '</span>' 
	     + '</a>';

$.each(violation['nodes'], function( j, instance ) {
    var target = instance['target'][0];

    $(target).wrap(function() {
        return "<span class='a11y-issue a11y-" 
             + impact 
             + " a11y-" 
             + id 
             + "'></span>";
    });

});

$(annotation).appendTo( $('.a11y-' + id) );

Custom tests to provide additional information

$('#annotated-preview img').each(
    function(){

    // Some other custom tests on images go here

    // Alt text reminder

    var ncsu_test = ncsu_tests.ncsu_reminder_alt;

    $(this).wrap(function() {
	return "<span class='a11y-issue a11y-" 
                + ncsu_test.impact 
                + " a11y-" 
                + ncsu_test.id 
                + "'></span>";
    });
);

Our Content Helper 
and Accessibility Helper 
don't solve all our problems.

But they are helpers to
put our staff on the right track.

Editing oit.ncsu.edu
from a Reluctant Content Creator's Point of View

1. Support ticket notifying workgroup they have an out-of-date page

(Will always happen at least once a year)

2. OIT staff edit that page in WordPress

3. After saving changes, notification indicates governance rule violations or accessibility issues
(And then they fix those issues!)

Raise your hand if
you think this plan
turns out well.

Part 6:
Broader Lessons
(Or, why you should care about everything I just said)

Moral of the Story

Don't do what we're doing.

Moral of the Story

Steal good ideas from the higher ed community
and pass them off as your own.

No, really.
People were really impressed by our governance plan.

Moral of the Story

Find ways to trust and empower
your content creators.

I may have more content creators than you do...

And I may have more reluctant content creators than you do...

Universal Challenges

• Coordinating & training content creators
   
• Maintaining quality standards
   
• Keeping lots of content accurate and up-to-date

Solutions in WordPress

• Custom fields to store editorial metadata
   
• admin_notices and metaboxes to provide
  in-context feedback
   
• Filter on save_post to give firm nudges toward good behavior

Brian DeConinck

NC State OIT Design

@BrianDeConinck

@oitdesign

  ·  

  ·  

View These Slides: go.ncsu.edu/wcbos-2017