MountainRiver provides Web Content Managment Systems (WCMS) solutions and integration services.
The Australian Commonwealth government website requirements and the NSW requirements differ in that the Commonwealth requirements are relatively technical in nature while the NSW requirements address a more general communications audience. Both insist on high quality, effective sites that implement accessibility and record keeping processes.
Solutions
Solutions that are feature rich and work for the people that are using them.
Effective
MountainRiver web publishing has experience providing solutions that get the message across and are able to support ongoing web publishing initiatives.
Strategy and Design
The strategy for a site, if defined well can drive all aspects of the site, including the structure and design. The result is highly effective sites.
MountainRiver web publishing believes that a site should both support business strategy and the needs of visitors to the site. Sites should be professionally presented and cater for the technical resources of as many visitors as possible while still being highly attractive.
Easy to Use Web Publishing
MountainRiver web publishing provides solutions that are easy to use. This typically means being 'data driven' with editing facilities associated with the content to be edited. The common editing workflows can be accessed by browsing and clicking within articles.
Solid Development and Deployment Process
The surprises are taken out of the process and efficiencies gained through the use of:
- Project plans.
- Sketches and wire frames.
- Design mock-ups.
- Information architecture diagrams.
- Process flows.
Depending on the project, some or all of these artifacts will be produced. If you would like any particular artifact please let us know when we are project planning and we will build it into the review process. For government clients we will usually use all of these artifacts and depending on the technical development load in the project add the icescrum tool to support agile scrum processes.
MountainRiver web publishing uses source code control (git) to manage all projects. This enables us to:
- Manage deployments.
- Track the software that has been deployed through development, QAT and UAT.
- Support an agile process by enabling software ready for integration to be merged and not holding up sprint releases by keeping rolled over features separate.
- Support a development team.
Testing
A software development project will proceed more smoothly if as much testing is automated as possible. This presents a challenge for some web publishing projects as the level of detail is high and what makes the project a success and many of the factors are qualitative and in presentation rather than functionality. Testing comes with an expense and the most reproducible test are automated rather than manually driven.
As such MountainRiver web publishing supports:
- The definition of tests and quality criteria early in the project.
- The development of web functional tests using either Selenium or GEB/Spock.
- Tests in software where possible.
MountainRiver supports web publishing which is user-driven. Our partner organisation Interlated supports customised applications based on frameworks which have sophisticated testing systems integrated. This facilitates the testing of software components. We can write tests in php and java.
Standards Compliance
There are 2 main reasons that standards compliance is important:
- Reach more people. Standards compliance is the best way to ensure that a site is viewable in as many browsers as possible. Standards compliance simplifies testing of a website, reducing the number of 'surprises' that are expensive to track down and resolve. For government, it is important on an equity level that online services be provided to as many citizens as practical.
- Content reuse. The more standards based the content the more likely it will be able to be read for records keeping purposes in the future and the more likely you will be able to parse and reuse content. It may be easier to migrate content.
The Technical Solutions
Software as a service solutions are available for:
- Meeting management.
- Campaign or product sites.
Kickstart solutions are available for:
- General government website.
- Membership driven sites.
- Community sites.
We can also support the agov drupal solution.
We have a number of developed modules that can be combined to support:
- Mapping.
- Collaborative media management and organisational publishing.
- Book reviews.
- Research chapters.
Metadata and AGLS
Government websites need their sites to be indexable both by structured search indexers as is oftent deployed by government and the more heuristic commercial search providers. Government needs to be able to categorise their sites and this is where AGLS and metadata become important.
Accessible Websites
The government kickstart solution supports WCAG2.
MountainRiver addresses accessibility through best practice, automated testing and adherence to the WCAG standards. We can source accessibilty testers to perform user-level accessibility reviews.
Responsive and Mobile
The solution is twofold:
- Use responsive themes for the developmet of websites to support the wide range of screen resolutions avialable today. The goal is to avoid either the postage stamp effect or horizontal scrolling.
- Use a mobile theme for touch mobile devices that presents large targets for touch. We currently use jQuery mobile as per the Smart Services CRC website.
Records Keeping
Record keeping is an important part of managing websites for government at all levels. We support record keeping through the use of meta-data supporting a content lifecycle and maintaing:
- Workflow and versions within the CMS.
- Versioned copies of static pages.
This caters for managing the historical record, being able to present content at a given time to support customer queries or for legal purposes and being able to access historical content for content reuse purposes.
Social Media Integration
The NSW Government website guidelines lists social media interaction as important, and indeed connecting channels is important.
Business Content Integration
Business content integration can often provide a valued resource to the site visitor, competitive and commercial advantage to the organisation.