CMS for the Accessible Federal Agency

Friday, April 25, 2008

Every now and then I'm tasked with an especially interesting assignment at the office. A real "humdinger" of a task that breaks the cycle of normalcy and helps to pad the old resume. By default my job tends to revolve around a few tasks that are repeated throughout the weeks and months: website design, maintenance, Section 508 issue resolution, UI support, and helping to write standard operating procedures/white papers. So when new, important tasks come up, I always jump at the chance to help break the monotony. Today was one of those big days.

Today I was tasked with taking the lead on picking a Content Management System (CMS) for the federal agency that I currently work for on-site. It's a very big, very important responsibility that will have a deep impact on everything that I and the web team here do from now until the end of our contract in four years. This will steer the direction that we go and lock us into a very expensive piece of software. Obviously not a task to take lightly.

So, what is it we're looking for in our CMS? Well, the "need-to-haves" are:

• Works on the .NET / IIS platform with SQL/Oracle database support
• Generates valid XHTML
• Uses templates that are/can be easily made to be Section 508
• Costs under $30k
• Can be implemented on both an Intranet and Internet site
• Highly scalable
• Licensed and supported commercially
• Includes a user friendly WYSIWYG editor for non-technical content managers

Those are the basic elements of the CMS solution that we're looking for. At first glance those seem like a lot of requirements, but really those are just skimming the surface. Cost will probably be an issue and if we decide to go with one of the more expensive packages there will no doubt be discussions back and forth about whether or not it's worth it.

So far in my research, I've come across three CMS packages that fit the basic bill. The first (and best fit thus far) is Percussion Software's Rhthymix, which ironically is being used by HHS. It's got a lot of bang for the buck, and seems to be fairly easy to implement. The price is also listed as "negotiable", which means it's either ridiculously expensive or might actually be within our budget.

The other two packages I've found thus far are called Immediacy CMS and RedDot CMS, which seems to be the more solid of the two at first glance, but starts at $55k - way out of our price range. Never the less, it's going to stay on the list for the initial presentation.

Next Steps

As today was the first day of this project, obviously nothing major will come of what progress has been made thus far. The process of picking out our CMS is going to be long and thorough since it represents a major paradigm shift in the way we currently get our content out onto the web.

After picking out three or four solid CMS packages I'll call the vendors to ask the tough questions (price, support, availability, scale, upgrades, true Section 508 compliance, etc.) as well as try and setup a good date for them to come out and give us a nice demo. That's followed up by discussion, demo testing, more discussion, and then the real work begins: setup, implementation, and moving content from flat ASPX pages to clean, database-driven content.

There's a lot of work ahead of me, and I don't see this really getting to the decision point until May or June, but that will give us a lot of time to get our pages cleaned up and ready for the transition and for me to continue growing my hair out I'll have something to tear out while the transition is going on.

Technorati Tags: cms, content management system, immediacy, reddot, rhythmix.

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Site transition: Successful!

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

I am pleased to inform you that the move from my former web host to my new host, as well as the transition from ASP-driven pages to PHP-driven pages was successful and there was zero downtime. The DNS update was propogated within four hours of the initial update, and thanks to some handy tricks with my .htaccess file, search engine placement and bookmarks should be preserved perfectly.

The only thing that isn't currently working is the contact form, which I'll need to work on a bit. It's been using ASP Formmail for a few years now, so I've got to consider whether or not to use Dreamhost's free cgi Formmail or write my own script. Depends on my laziness level, I suppose.

Either way, if you discover a bug or find a broken link, please let me know via the comments for this post. Thanks!

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The transition begins!

Mexijew.com will be going down at some point over the next few days while I move it to a new host and switch it over to php. Initially, all of the pages will still be .asp, but I've got the .htaccess file configured to read the .asp extension as a php file, thus preserving search engine placement and keeping URL's fresh and real.

See you on the flip side!

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Is it time for Hillary to pack it up?

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

As many of my old readers know, and most of the new ones have probably figured out, I am a liberal. A moderate liberal, anyway. I'm not one of those "foam at the mouth" types who go monkey shit crazy for raising taxes and social programs, but I'm definitely more to the left than I am to the right. I, like many Americans, have been displeased with the way the US policy has been shaped in the last seven years and I'm looking forward to a change of any kind, because let's be honest here: None of the 3 major candidates are as corrosively partisan as the Bush Administration has been. No matter who wins, it's highly likely that we'll see some positive changes in some of the issues that matter the most (money, war, foreign policy).

Still, there's something that's bothering me. When it was time to vote in the Maryland Primaries, I didn't vote because I honestly couldn't decide which democrat I liked more - Hillary or Obama. Honestly, both of them share stances on the issues I'm most concerned about that it's hard to tell which would be better for me. Both also represent what I feel to be a major positive achievement in the history of our country: Both would be a tremendous first for the US - first true female contender for president, or first African-American contender for president. The way I see it, it's a win/win scenario both ways.

As time has gone on and things have been released about both candidates, I have admittedly leaned a little more towards Hillary Clinton. Not because of anything she did, however. I've leaned a little more towards Hillary because of the anti-semitic comments made by Barack Obama's pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. While Obama did come out and say that he didn't agree with some of the less-than-friendly stuff that Rev. Wright said, he didn't do what most politicians do in situations like this: distance themselves from the offender. While I can appreciate the candor with which Obama spoke about this incident, my inner Jew is always afraid and suspicious of people who associate themselves with those who blindly dislike my people or blame them for things that we aren't at fault for.

Despite all of that, however, I think it might be time for Hillary Clinton to pack it up and leave the race. Lately she and Obama have been going at it in a very negative way, and I'd hate to see this kind of negativity go far enough that it would damage the chance of the democratic presidential candidate in November. I don't think that would happen since the US has a very short memory of things that are said and done, but I don't think intra-party turmoil does us any good either, except to give the media something to discuss constantly.

Is it time for Hillary to pack it up, or should she continue to campaign and let the cards fall as they will at the Democratic National Convention in August?

Technorati Tags: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Elections, Democrats.

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It's time for a change

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

For over five years now, I've blogged on Mexijew.com and it's been a bittersweet experience. I enjoy blogging, and really enjoy all of the great feedback and e-mails I get from people. I haven't enjoyed the racist e-mails and comments, or the fact that I'm simply not comfortable giving some of my coworkers the link to this blog because, well, mexijew sounds more like a racial slur than something that an IT professional writes on.

With that in mind, I believe it's time for a change. I'm going to keep this blog going, and I'm going to keep the domain name mexijew.com, but I'm going to use a new domain name with it as well. I already own a number of domain names that I'm not really using, so I thought I'd give you, my loyal readers, the chance to have some input on what the new domain name should be.

I currently have two domain names that I'm not really using for anything and could switch to:

• PartialZero.com - Test blog using WordPress
• Flavored-Air.com - Mostly used for file storage

This might also be a good time to move this site from old school ASP 3.0 to php, although there's some obvious logistical issues that would have to be worked out (as well as search engine placement issues), but I think that's something that needs to happen anyway. There's no good reason to use ASP 3.0 anymore.

Do you have any suggestions? Do you think either of those domain names would be great to use? Let me know - post in the comments below.

Technorati Tags: mexijew.com, domain names.

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A Haiku

Wednesday, April 02, 2008

Busy week at work
Nothing of substance to write
Dogs love Snausages.

Technorati Tags: Haiku.

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Accessibility Trick: The real yet fake yet real <label>

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

In my post last week I mentioned that we've been spending a lot of time working on Section 508 compliance on my primary contract and today's post is something of an extension of that. Today I'm going to show you a little trick that I created as a work-around for accessibility testing software that tosses off errors (false positives) for having a properly coded and accessible image as a <label> for a form control. Warning - if you're not a web designer and/or don't deal with Section 508 or WCAG, you might want to skip this post. It's a tad technical for the general public.

So, here's your situation: You have a website that has a search box, but because of the design of the site and the way things are setup (i.e. space is an issue), there really isn't a good place to put a <label> to associate to the search box. You literally have a box that the control is in, the form element, and a submit button. The box that the form element sits in has a graphical title (like "Search This Site") that has a proper alt tag and is declared in the correct fashion. To be 508 compliant, your <label> has to be associated with your form element. In this case it's an <input> tag with the attribute type="text", so it's a regular text box. Here's a visual example of this situation:

As you can see, this is a basic page element and can be moved around anywhere in the page. In the case of this example, we use it at the same place on every page - on the left side, at the very top of the content section, just after the site header and universal navigation. This search box appears on just about every page on the site, and it's actually a user control, so the code is exactly the same for it on every page it's used on. That means that if we change this one file, that change is applied in every instance of that user control on the website.

If we were to wrap our <label> element around the image, when you put it through a thorough 508 validator, such as AccVerify, it would come out as a "Priority 1" error and would not be 508 compliant. Unfortunately, because there's really no space to fit a proper text label, I had to come up with a creative work around. Here it is:

A <label for=""> element wrapped around a <span> element that contains appropriate label text but is hidden from the users view (but is fully viewable and accessible by folks using Braille and text readers).

Here's the example:

Basically, what we've done is we've wrapped the <label> element around appropriate text inside of a <span> (inline element). The <span> has a class of "hideForPrint". This css class looks like this:

What that class does is it hides whatever is contained in that class from being seen on screen. However, when you are using a Braille or screen reader - both of which ignore CSS and simply read the content on the page - it correctly displays and associates the form control with the appropriate label. Here's what it looks like with CSS disabled:

Thus, we have an amazing, invisible work-around for any form label 508 issues that occur that will fix any validation issues you have! Huzzah!

Technorati Tags: Section 508, Web Design, Accessibility, WCAG, Web Standards.

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I have been neglecting you far too long

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Back in the day, just a year ago I think, I used to religiously post a blog here every week. Before that, it was a few times a week. Things changes, life gets busier, and let's face it - my motivations and attention span aren't what they used to be. Still, I love this website, and I love posting to it so I'm going to try my damnedest to get back into it.

What's going on with me?

It's been an interesting couple of months. Medically, I've been something of a mess. Three hospital visits in three months including my first time being admitted overnight - a new record that I'm not terribly proud of. In January I sprained my left ankle pretty good. Still healing a bit from that, actually. In February I got the flu - the strain that the flu shot this year didn't cover - and I got sick enough that I needed to go to the hospital in the night because of the respiratory issues.

Just this last weekend, for the first time in 14 years I threw up (among other nasty things), had a fever of 102.7 and then later on developed chest pains that my doctors thought might have been a heart attack, so I was admitted to Shady Grove Adventist overnight Saturday to Sunday. I'm happy to say it was, apparently, just a very bad virus and nothing is wrong with my heart. I'm still recovering from that but in general am much better.

In my personal life, things are going as they typically go. Some ups, some downs. I had a dinner date with two old high school friends of mine, Amanda & Tracy, two weeks ago. It was great to see them again and I'm hoping it leads to seeing both of them more. Since I've been between illnesses, I haven't really gone out much, although Brian scored us tickets to the George Carlin show at the end of March that I'm really looking forward to. This will be my first experience seeing live comedy, and I'm sure it's going to be great.

I also got a new car in February - my second Saturn, a 2008 Aura XE with all the options. It's great. Power/heated leather seats, OnStar and XM Radio (which I love and am going to subscribe to at the end of the free trial), 3.5L V6, etc. It's a great car, and I'm extremely happy with it. Much nicer than my '05 Vue.

Work wise, I've been extremely busy. Besides my normal contract, my company also has me working on a side contract for a Dept. of Defense program that has been... interesting, to say the least. I'm not doing anything terribly special for this DoD client - developing a public-facing website for them - but it's definitely been a real different experience than I'm used to. I've also had to put in a lot more hours after work and on weekends than I'm used to, which hasn't been great for my mental faculties, but it all works out to more money and more positive notoriety within the company, which is something I've been working at actively for some time now.

At the regular day-to-day contract, things have shifted quite a bit. Normally I'd spend, say, 70% of our time working on maintenance, 20% on new development, and 10% on Section 508 concerns. A few months ago, when I slowed down my blogging, the paradigm shifted and the agency decided to make Section 508 compliance its #1 issue, so we're now spending 70% of our time dedicated to Section 508 testing, fixes, instruction, and revamping, while the other 30% is dedicated to everything else. Keeps us pretty busy here.

My family is good. Well, those that I speak to, anyway. My father is doing extremely well with his girlfriend/fiance in New Jersey. They just got back from a Caribbean cruise - my fathers first vacation in something like 14 years - and he had a blast. My sister just celebrated her 23rd birthday on Sunday. She's very excited that her boyfriend got her a gun as a gift. Yes, a Jewish girl who loves guns and hunting with bows. It's weird, I know. My father and I still don't quite understand that, but hey... whatever makes her happy is fine with me.

Finally, in World of Warcraft news, my guild, <Order of the Raven> on Aggramar-US, (I'm the webmaster for the site by the way, so feel free to give me some props on that nice logo) "beat the game" in the first week of Januaray. That means that all of the raid bosses in all of the instances have been killed. Archimonde, Illidan, all of those jerks. Dead and on farm status now. Last week my main level 70 character, Mayo, got his fifth and final piece of the Lightbringer Raiment (Tier 6 armor set), so he looks pretty bad ass right now. Essentially, until Patch 2.4 (Fury of the Sunwell) comes out, Mayo is wearing some of the best gear in the game. Also, according to Gankbang.com, Mayo is in the top 50 of all holy paladins in the USA when it comes to +healing, which really makes me feel pretty stoked in-game (and makes the e-peen a lot bigger, of course...). In a game with over 9 million players, that's saying something.

So, that's it. I'll post something more interesting soon - no later than one week from now. I promise. Really. Seriously. You can stop rolling your eyes at me, damnit.

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