CMS Migration

Open.Michigan is the University of Michigan's contribution to the Open Education Resources (OER) project—an initiative that promotes the free and open exchange of courseware, throughout the world. After several years of using the eduCommons platform, which is built on the Zope and Plone CMSs, Open.Michigan decided it was time for an upgrade. Their goal was to build a top-notch courseware delivery system and make it freely available to the OER community. Drupal was the natural choice for this endeavor because not only is it robust and scalable, it is also open-source. Over many months, we worked very closely with the Open.Michigan team to develop a complex courseware delivery system to meet their exact specifications. Features include one-click download of all course materials, easier collaboration among university departments, and a full revision-tracking system. Since the system launched in late September, the staff at Open.Michigan have seen huge improvements in productivity. Piet Kleymeer, Open Education Manager, states, "...an improved user interface and more reliable and consistent software behavior, has cut our publishing time by nearly 400%." The system developed by Open.Michigan is available for download through github.com.

It's hard to manage the disparate content of 25 individual schools and that of many more unique departments, as well as maintain consistency in both presentation and quality—administrators at Kalamazoo Public Schools know this first hand. They came to us with the lofty goal of doing just that. We worked closely with the district's technology department to build out a new, Drupal-based system that offered a smorgasbord of features: events scheduling and calendars, news articles and alerts, school and staff directories, updateable rotating text and banner, as well as various sub-sites that are accessible and/or manageable by specific user groups. And it all had to integrate with their existing systems, user accounts, and databases. Additionally, we provided website design services, giving the entire website a cohesive and easy-to-use look and feel, matching the school district's existing branding.

The student-run newspaper for the University of North Carolina, The Daily Tar Heel, "is one of the most decorated college newspapers in the country." Priding themselves on top-notch journalism and state-of-the-art delivery, the staff wanted to upgrade their website to offer more of the industry-standard features found on national online newspapers. We partnered with Stunt3 Multimedia to build a online news delivery system that met the visionary demands of the Daily Tar Heel team, and could handle the tens of thousands of visitors they serve every month. The resulting product, CrystalType, integrates with WoodWing Enterprise, a leading newspaper publishing software suite, to provide push-button publishing to the web. For more information on CrystalType, visit www.crystaltype.com.

www.childrenscourtyard.com

www.childtime.com

www.lapetite.com

www.montessori.com

www.tutortime.com

Learning Care Group provides early education and child care throughout the U.S. under the umbrellas of five distinct brands, each having their own website. In order to streamline their ability to maintain each site, the company contracted us to help them select a new, more usable CMS and migrate the five websites to a multi-site implementation—one that would allow them to share common data without duplicating code and processing. Since the migration of the websites, we've also worked closely with the company’s marketing vendors to develop additional functionality to meet strategic and search marketing goals.

As a trade organization for the growing Michigan biotech industry, MichBio relies on their website to manage nearly everything they do, including memberships, newsletters, events, directories, dues and registration. However, their former website and CRM did not play nice together, causing numerous maintenance headaches. The organization decided to undergo a complete website overhaul. MichBio contracted Switchback to develop their new backend system, including content management and integration of a new CRM with their existing database. The new MichBio website provides secure membership management for both the group and its members through one easy-to-use interface.