Websites are a powerful information and promotional tool for encouraging enrolments and creating community awareness ……… and Catholic Education (Parramatta, Sydney) (where I hang out!) is working on the development of a content managed template-based websites for all schools in the Parramatta Diocese that can be customised to suit each school’s personality and needs.

All our schools will have a website that is professionally designed, dynamic and current, easy to manage, but most of all – effective. I have seen some of the work in the pilot schools, and it is ‘right on the button’ web design and effective

The easy-to-use Content Management System (CMS) will allow schools to modify and maintain the content of their website with no fuss and will make updating content, pictures and menus on websites very quick and easy for all staff.

The aim is to reduce/remove duplication of information and processes, and to fully integrate with our central database and intranet which feeds all sites with information allowing for restricted access to “staff only” information. Of course, the first stage will feature all the usual CMS features that makes life easy for school staff – managing text, images, pages and galleries etc. It will also provide RSS feeds to syndicate website content. Cool!

Even cooler will be the additional developments planned further in the rollout – cool stuff like easy upload of audio and video files, Web 2.0 tools (like wikis and podcasting), easy creation of newsletters and automatic delivery of E-News, multi-lingual support, and (not to forget marketing) search engine optimisation and access to website statistics to gauge site effectiveness.

Good one!

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