PRODUCT DEFINITION
QuickPages is a web-based tool that lets anyone make a professional-looking website quickly.
web-based: Sites are created and edited with a web browser. QuickPages lives on an IS&T server.
anyone: It will be available to the MIT community
professional looking: Sites are made with built-in templates and stylesheets. This gives you a baseline decent-looking website. You may customize the HTML further as your inclinations and technical skill allow.
quickly: QuickPages helps you lay out your site with a site creation wizard. The edit tool lets you easily add pages and navigation menu items.
KEY ELEMENTS
"A simple tool for simple sites" - QuickPages is for "brochureware" type sites. These have up to a couple dozen pages, no interactivity, no dynamic elements.
Easy to use: Help Desk and DCAD advised us that Dreamweaver and FTP'ing files is outside many use's skill sets.
Professional looking sites: Department, project, and group sites are professional endeavors. They want sites that reflect this.
Cheap: Departments typically spend $2-$7K on outside vendors for brochureware sites. QuickPages is free to the community. A department may create a basic site with QuickPages and hire a designer to tweak the HTML.
AUDIENCE
This will be of interest to users who:
- want a good-looking site but don't have web designers on staff
- want to update their sites themselves
- need a tool that's simpler than Dreamweaver
- want a simple, straightforward publishing tool that doesn't require a lot of training
- publish mostly static html content
THE BUSINESS CASE
QuickPages will save the Institute money. According to PSB and DCAD, departments typically spend $2,000 - $7,000 and 6-10 weeks creating a brochureware site.
DCAD is a revenue-driven group that provides consulting services to internal MIT customers. They will be able to serve more customers more quickly with QuickPages.
We can develop/commission wizard widgets that encourage use of other IS&T services, and which highlight customers use of those services. For example, there could be a widget to display the RSS feed from a wiki areah3. SCOPE QuickPages is tightly focused on being a simple tool for simple sites. At demos, there are always questions about "Can it do (XYZ) like Dreamweaver does?" "Can we have a separate staging server and publish the site later?" It's important to emphasize simple tool, simple sites. We'll add some features in response to community need, but we won't reinvent Dreamweaver or a CMS. When customers need that level of complexity, we'll direct them to more appropriate tools and services.