Notre Dame is probably known best for its top-notch educational atmosphere and its winning ways on the collegiate football field. But thanks to a program implemented last year, the university has now scored top marks in distributed Web publishing.

Notre Dame was having problems ensuring that its more than 270,000 Web pages spread across 300 different Web sites were being updated in a timely manner. The school&singlequot;s Web publishing tools were difficult to use, resulting in infrequent updates to important content. Notre Dame needed a way to enable end users to update relevant content, while ensuring that it kept quality and look-and-feel controls in place.

After reviewing several Web publishing tools, content management systems and homegrown efforts, the school realized that most were simply too complicated and too expensive. "Our first budget, at seven figures, was turned down," explained Tom Monaghan, director of planning and programs for the Notre Dame Office of Information Technologies (OIT). "So we rethought our criteria, lowered our sights, got some funding at a lower level, and started implementing a centrally managed solution. But our pilot groups told us it was way too complicated. We were really at our wit&singlequot;s end."

Then, the OIT hit upon Macromedia&singlequot;s Contribute content publishing tool. The school was invited to beta test the tool, and soon found itself rolling it out university-wide. With Contribute, users can build their Web content as easily as dragging and dropping Microsoft Office documents right onto a Web page. Most use templates that have already been built in Dreamweaver MX, Macromedia&singlequot;s Web layout and publishing program. The overall key is the tool&singlequot;s ease-of-use.

"It amazes me each time I see our front-line personnel modifying and editing content so easily with Contribute," said Matt Klawitter, currently interim director of the Notre Dame Web Group. "And they can see immediately how the page looks. If they don’t like it, they change it just as easily."

And since the content is easy to update, it gets updated more often, resulting in Web pages and sites that are far more useful to the university and its users.

"Websites are there to be used," Monaghan said. "And if you’re not updating the content frequently enough, your audience—students, parents, the University community—isn&singlequot;t going to see the value."

In fact, after the school implemented Contribute, Mohaghan said overall site traffic rose 15% year over year. And because it is so inexpensive and easy to use and maintain, he estimates that Contribute saved the university nearly $100,000 a year in Web publishing and training costs.