National Collegiate Scouting Association

The National Collegiate Scouting Association, or NCSA, is the leading collegiate recruiting source for more than 35,000 college coaches across the country. Their self-described high-tech approach to helping student athletes includes their online presence, a website designed to monitor the specific wants and needs of college coaches and match student athletes with the appropriate collegiate opportunities that will allow them to succeed at the next level.

Goals

The goals for developing the site included:

• Convert all existing links and content from the website’s previous CMS to eZ Publish. In doing so, achieve the goals below.
  • A better interface, greater functionality and a more accessible administrative system. Templates were not coded to support multilevel navigation, and there were issues with administrative applications, certain types of pages and navigation.
  • Improved performance: the website experienced crashes and navigational inconsistencies in its inception.

Results

All pre-existing functionality and content was duplicated in eZ Publish, resulting in a better organized, more robust website. Overall website performance was enhanced: the site no longer needs to rely on static caching for backup. Other improvements included:

• Content migration: Outwardly, the website remained the same. Duo was able to migrate the entirety of NCSA’s original content into eZ Publish. This involved customizing a number of applications, including forms, listing pages, and pages that drew data from external sources.

• New Features: Additions previously unavailable to the website included an RSS feed, a form that supported e-mail attachments, and the ability to create multiple, customize page templates/classes. It also improved the existing navigation system.

• Administrative Tools: Through eZ Publish, administrators were able to easily configure page templates and update content, giving them greater control and the ability to keep information current.

Duo’s developers met internally with Blend Interactive, a development firm specializing in custom content management. The eZ Publish solution was decided upon during early discussions with NCSA, who remained supportive throughout the entire process.

This site was built using eZ Publish, an open source content management system developed by eZ Systems. eZ Publish is available for free download under the GPL license, as well as under proprietary licenses with commercial support.

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