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 and sites 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 area