We’ve toned down a little bit, but we used to have 2 devs and a sys admin that oversaw web dev, intranet, custom apps etc. We’re really down to about 1.5 from 3 now.
In house—my position (webmaster) is new as of last December, and I do code, content, design, strategy, plus the intranet. (And I julienne fries.) No online banking stuff, although I’m contemplating changes to the design “wrapper,” that’s all at the CUSO. There’s a guy here who interfaces with our webhost; he used to do the website as part of his very multi-faceted job. He also handles the most technical stuff, hardware, OS, etc.
Personally, I like being a one-woman-band: keeps my perspective broad. At least I feel like the size of the job is relatively well-matched to the amount of staffing, unlike at my last job. (Higher education web dev. Entirely insane.)
So if you guys don’t mind me asking, what online banking product do you use and to what extent will they let you modify? Probably not any of the actual “transactional” portions, right?
Also, are you guys using a CMS (content management system) or are you/your people skilled enough to edit the pages themselves? Thanks!
Online banking is Symitar’s product—can’t remember the name. As far as I can tell, all I can modify is the wrapper around the transactional bits. Thus far into my job, I haven’t looked into it a whole lot.
We don’t have a CMS now (I’ve been slinging HTML since ‘98), but I am starting to think about it, just to make my work a little easier. I’m a big of WordPress for use as a “tiny” CMS.
We’re doing the same thing as well and I think moving to a CMS might be a bigger plus than what we realize. My hopes in allowing other people to manage easier things like updating copy, rates, whatever can give us the ability to do more interesting, possibly exponential so, ideas on the site that we couldn’t/wouldn’t have done due to us dealing in the details.
@Brad: I think a key thing to realize when looking at a CMS is that even though that level of decentralization is nice, it involves it’s own level of administration and responsibility.
Can anyone edit any section? Can you track who changed what and when? Is content reviewed and updated regularly? Who’s responsible for those reviews? Can images be included in the content? What size can they be?
These are all things that live in the head of a one-person-updating-html system that sometimes get overlooked.
Don’t get me wrong, I love a CMS over updating html files by hand, it’s just important to have these questions addressed before you install or spend money on (hopefully not) a CMS and expect it to solve your web content woes.
We host several of our own websites, but not our Internet banking site. We are considering outsourcing all hosting for two reasons: 1) Let someone else take care of some of the security 2) Provide some form of communication with customers in the event of a widespread regional disaster—this was one of the more important lessons learned in Katrina.
We develop and maintain our websites with internal staff. We have 9 developers, and different people are responsible for different sites. We attempted to outsource these functions but had bad experiences—twice. In both cases, the provider had very high staff turnover. Just as someone would learn our business well enough to really help us, they would leave. We finally gave up and decided to keep it in-house…at least for now.
Our website is currently being redeveloped by an outside vendor with a CMS solution. We will have an administrator within our company as well as several authors and editors, but the large task of building the site has been outsourced. Previously, our company built, hosted and managed everything for the site.
Robbie W.
In-house, not outhouse.
We’ve toned down a little bit, but we used to have 2 devs and a sys admin that oversaw web dev, intranet, custom apps etc. We’re really down to about 1.5 from 3 now.
Elaine N.
In house—my position (webmaster) is new as of last December, and I do code, content, design, strategy, plus the intranet. (And I julienne fries.) No online banking stuff, although I’m contemplating changes to the design “wrapper,” that’s all at the CUSO. There’s a guy here who interfaces with our webhost; he used to do the website as part of his very multi-faceted job. He also handles the most technical stuff, hardware, OS, etc.
Personally, I like being a one-woman-band: keeps my perspective broad. At least I feel like the size of the job is relatively well-matched to the amount of staffing, unlike at my last job. (Higher education web dev. Entirely insane.)
Brad G.
So if you guys don’t mind me asking, what online banking product do you use and to what extent will they let you modify? Probably not any of the actual “transactional” portions, right?
Also, are you guys using a CMS (content management system) or are you/your people skilled enough to edit the pages themselves? Thanks!
Elaine N.
Online banking is Symitar’s product—can’t remember the name. As far as I can tell, all I can modify is the wrapper around the transactional bits. Thus far into my job, I haven’t looked into it a whole lot.
We don’t have a CMS now (I’ve been slinging HTML since ‘98), but I am starting to think about it, just to make my work a little easier. I’m a big of WordPress for use as a “tiny” CMS.
Brad G.
We’re doing the same thing as well and I think moving to a CMS might be a bigger plus than what we realize. My hopes in allowing other people to manage easier things like updating copy, rates, whatever can give us the ability to do more interesting, possibly exponential so, ideas on the site that we couldn’t/wouldn’t have done due to us dealing in the details.
Mark M.
@Brad: I think a key thing to realize when looking at a CMS is that even though that level of decentralization is nice, it involves it’s own level of administration and responsibility.
Can anyone edit any section? Can you track who changed what and when? Is content reviewed and updated regularly? Who’s responsible for those reviews? Can images be included in the content? What size can they be?
These are all things that live in the head of a one-person-updating-html system that sometimes get overlooked.
Don’t get me wrong, I love a CMS over updating html files by hand, it’s just important to have these questions addressed before you install or spend money on (hopefully not) a CMS and expect it to solve your web content woes.
Gary F.
We host several of our own websites, but not our Internet banking site. We are considering outsourcing all hosting for two reasons: 1) Let someone else take care of some of the security 2) Provide some form of communication with customers in the event of a widespread regional disaster—this was one of the more important lessons learned in Katrina.
Gary F.
We develop and maintain our websites with internal staff. We have 9 developers, and different people are responsible for different sites. We attempted to outsource these functions but had bad experiences—twice. In both cases, the provider had very high staff turnover. Just as someone would learn our business well enough to really help us, they would leave. We finally gave up and decided to keep it in-house…at least for now.
Mike T.
Our website is currently being redeveloped by an outside vendor with a CMS solution. We will have an administrator within our company as well as several authors and editors, but the large task of building the site has been outsourced. Previously, our company built, hosted and managed everything for the site.