[Sigia-l] Standardized site design for non profit orgs

[Stephanie Heacox]

I'm a little unclear about whether you are objecting to standardization or
centralization, or both.

Standardization across individual sites has several advantages:  more
consistent look, feel, content and navigation; easier design and upkeep via
style sheets and/or templates.     It does limit creativity, but in my
experience that has either been (a) a small price to pay or (b) a very good
thing.

Centralization can go either way, depending on how well content management
is set up, both technically and procedurally.  If the organization has
technically sound content management, intelligent management and processes
that support and encourage content production by local branches, and
provides forums within the centralized site for those branches, why wouldn't
you want to centralize?  Done well, it should reduce costs and make
everyone's lives easier.  Of course, if the organization has political and
cultural issues to resolve, centralization efforts can really bring them to
a head - the optimistic might view that as an opportunity...

Stephanie Heacox
Director of Information Architecture
Orbis2 Partners, LLC
direct (718)436-2505
cell (917)797-0719
fax (516)908-3677
stephanie.heacox at orbis-2.com
www.orbis-2.com


-----Original Message-----
From: sigia-l-admin at asis.org [mailto:sigia-l-admin at asis.org]On Behalf Of
robin mcpherson
Sent: Friday, November 22, 2002 12:45 PM
To: sigia-l at asis.org
Subject: [Sigia-l] Standardized site design for non profit orgs


Hello.

I am working for a national non profit organization with many provincial
and local branches across the country.  There has recently been some
movement within the organization to eliminate all the provincial and local
sites and have one single web site for everyone.  This to me is a bad
idea.  My problem is finding supporting information or data for my argument
against this centralization.

Any suggestions?

Thanks.
Robin

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