Led the modernization of the Jacksonville University website, including the migration of more than 6,000 pages to a new platform.
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Timeline
January 2015 — December 2016
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Team
University Stakeholders from Marketing & Communications, Admissions, Advancement, IT, Athletics, Student Life
Modern Campus – CMS Providers
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My Role
I served as product owner of the University website and project lead for the modernization project.
The problem
The University’s web presence was scattered and aging, with little to no management in place.
Jacksonville University's web presence was fragmented, aging, and difficult to govern.
From the user's perspective, information about the university was frequently inconsistent or contradictory. Examples included conflicting tuition figures, outdated institutional branding, and information distributed across independently maintained websites.
From an operational perspective, decentralized website creation had resulted in digital properties with unclear ownership and maintenance responsibilities. Employees sometimes created websites for departments or initiatives without establishing mechanisms to transfer ownership or retire those properties when they were no longer needed.
The university's primary website also operated on SharePoint 2010, a platform approaching the end of its supported lifecycle and presenting an emerging security concern.
Beyond that immediate risk, the existing CMS was poorly suited to the university's long-term enterprise publishing needs. Other content management systems offered capabilities such as link preservation, accessibility checking, and structured or reusable content that could help address persistent operational challenges.
The university needed more than a platform replacement. It needed a stronger technical and operational foundation for its digital presence.
Project Objectives
Address the immediate security risks associated with an aging CMS.
Select a platform aligned with institutional objectives and long-term publishing requirements.
Improve the consistency, accuracy, accessibility, and maintainability of web content.
Support distributed content contributors through appropriate tools and standards.
Complete a large-scale content migration while minimizing operational disruption.
Establish a foundation for more sustainable enterprise web governance.
Strategic approach
Triage immediate risks while planning for long-term needs.
I recognized that the university's web ecosystem presented interconnected challenges that could not all be resolved simultaneously.
Selecting and implementing an entirely new CMS would require research, stakeholder engagement, procurement, technical planning, and migration. Meanwhile, the risk associated with the existing platform was becoming increasingly urgent.
In collaboration with IT, I developed a phased modernization approach.
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The first phase addressed the most immediate technical risk through an upgrade from SharePoint 2010 to SharePoint 2013.
This was a relatively low-risk, low-effort solution compared with a full platform replacement.
Although the interim upgrade delayed work on the larger modernization initiative, it reduced the risk of operating an unsupported platform and provided additional time to evaluate long-term solutions without allowing an urgent security concern to dictate the university's technology selection.
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Once the immediate platform concern was addressed, I focused on identifying a CMS that could better support the university's institutional priorities, audience needs, content operations, and future web strategy.
Discovery and requirements development
I interviewed faculty and staff from departments across campus to understand how the existing web ecosystem supported or hindered their work.
These conversations provided insight into institutional needs, publishing challenges, and opportunities to improve the digital experience.
I combined stakeholder feedback with:
An assessment of the university website against the institutional strategic plan.
Research into higher education websites and relevant industry practices.
User experience principles and best practices.
Evaluation of existing platform limitations.
Research into content management system capabilities.
I translated these findings into a request for proposals (RFP) that reflected the university's technical, organizational, and strategic requirements.
Technology evaluation and vendor selection
I researched CMS providers, with particular attention to platforms designed to support higher education institutions.
Working with my supervisor, I identified potential vendors and distributed the RFP.
To create a consistent and evidence-based evaluation process, I developed a scoring rubric based on the RFP requirements and assessed the submitted proposals against those criteria.
The three highest-scoring vendors were invited to campus to demonstrate their platforms to a selection of university stakeholders.
Following each demonstration, I collected structured stakeholder feedback through a brief survey. This feedback helped determine which two vendors would advance into negotiations.
I then presented my final recommendation to senior leadership. The university ultimately entered into a contract with OmniUpdate for its Omni CMS platform.
This process balanced technical evaluation, institutional priorities, stakeholder needs, and organizational decision-making.
Implementation: Translating strategy into an operational website
After vendor selection, I partnered with OmniUpdate to develop the migration plan and coordinate the transition to the new CMS.
The implementation involved approximately 6,000 web pages and required coordination across technical partners and campus stakeholders.
The project progressed through several stages:
Migration planning and coordination.
Content migration.
Pre-launch quality assurance.
Preparation of URL redirects and sitemap updates.
Production launch.
Activation of redirects and sitemap changes.
Post-launch quality assurance.
By planning both pre-launch and post-launch activities, the project accounted for the needs of an operational website rather than treating technical deployment as the final measure of success.
Establishing a foundation for sustainable content operations
The new CMS provided opportunities to improve how the university created, maintained, and distributed information.
As part of my broader ownership of the university website, I implemented reusable content structures for information that appeared in multiple locations, including tuition rates, admissions information, and university statistics.
This edit-once, publish-everywhere approach addressed a fundamental problem in the previous web ecosystem: maintaining consistency when identical institutional information was independently published across multiple pages.
The university's broader web operating model combined centralized strategy, technical oversight, publishing standards, and contributor support with distributed ownership of departmental information.
These practices supported approximately 100 content contributors across the institution.
Results and impact
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Technical modernization
Addressed the immediate risks associated with the aging SharePoint 2010 platform through an interim upgrade.
Successfully transitioned approximately 6,000 web pages to a CMS better suited to the university's enterprise publishing needs.
Established a technical foundation for continued website development and optimization.
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Institutional alignment
Engaged stakeholders across multiple university departments in requirements development and technology evaluation.
Established a structured, criteria-based approach to vendor selection.
Connected technology investment decisions to institutional priorities and operational needs.
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Operational sustainability
Created a foundation for more effective centralized oversight of a distributed publishing environment.
Enabled reusable content structures that supported greater consistency across the website.
Supported ongoing improvements in accessibility, content governance, and publishing practices.
Reflection
Enterprise website modernization requires more than choosing the best available technology.
It requires understanding the organization's immediate risks, strategic priorities, operational needs, stakeholder relationships, and capacity for change.
This project reinforced the importance of sequencing transformation initiatives deliberately. Addressing urgent technical concerns first created the conditions necessary to make a thoughtful long-term platform decision.
It also demonstrated the value of incorporating stakeholders into technology evaluation while maintaining a structured decision-making process grounded in institutional objectives.
My approach to digital transformation is to establish a sustainable ecosystem in which technology, content, people, and processes work together to support organizational goals.