Re: Questions for W3C website redesign RFP

Hello Simon,

I’m very happy to hear about your interest!
I have partial answers to your question and will follow-up as soon as I hear back from my colleagues from the systems team who are at meeting this week.

> On 22 Nov 2019, at 16:00 , Simon R Jones <simon@studio24.net> wrote:
> 
> Hi Coralie & the rest of the W3C team,
> 
> This is a really interesting opportunity, I’ve been using the W3C site since I first got involved with the web over twenty years ago! My team at Studio 24 are very keen to respond to this RFP, I have a few questions I hope you can help with...
> 
> 1) Will there be an opportunity to talk to your team about this project either before the proposal deadline or after (e.g. a conference call)? We strongly feel getting to know an agency is an important part of finding the right supplier. 
> 

Yes. Our next opportunity for a conference call is after this week (which unfortunately is the last week of the open Q&A period).



> 2) Do you have any technical requirements for a new CMS (e.g. platform) apart from a preference for open source? Or are you happy to review this as part of the project? 
> 

A bit of both. We avoided to mention any technology or system in our RFP so as to keep our options open and because we expect vendors to make proposals. 
We are open to tools and platforms suggested by vendors, but would need to understand those we would need to adapt to our needs.
Please, note that we will move our infrastructure to the cloud and therefore need to think about the features that come with cloud-based hosting.
Also, unlimited data versioning would be ideal.
It would be nice if the CMS provided a way to integrate data from various sources without requiring us to customize said sources.


> 3) You note a requirement for the CMS to be long-life and performance is a key requirement. Given the range of content on the W3C site one approach we would look to explore would be a Headless CMS, where we read in data from a CMS to build a robust, performant, standards-based front-end site. Is this an approach you are happy to explore?

(I will follow-up as soon as I’m able)


> 
> 4) I presume you are not expecting a fixed CMS solution and approach to be recommended in the initial proposal, we would expect this to be explored and defined in the project itself. Is that OK?
> 

Yes, of course.


> 5) You note you use a “custom CMS” at present. What sort of content export options exist (e.g. XML) or can you tell us what database or content storage method the CMS uses?

Our current website relies on a solution developed in-house that aggregates HTML fragments coming from different sources (Wordpress, Symfony, manually maintained files, in-house tools, etc.). 

The fragments system relies on well-formed XHTML for XSLT.
Wordpress is used for the blog part of the website. It is also used to feed some data to our custom-made "CMS".
Mediawiki is used for the wiki part.
Some pages are generated using Symfony framework.


> 6) How well structured are the content models in your existing CMS, or does this just require a complete review as part of this project?

(I’ll follow-up as soon as I’m able.)


> 
> 7) Do you have an estimate for the number of pages that will need to be migrated from your existing site / CMS? Do you expect the chosen agency to take responsibility for content migration?

We have a good grasp on content inventory, but it may still be part of the scope of work. For example, we may have some ideas regarding migration that a vendor may make us revisit as part of their migration strategy advice, or we may have ideas of elements for future phases that the vendor may advise we re-prioritize. I expect that our systems team may be involved in the content migration, details TBD.


> 8) You currently use DuckDuckGo for your site search. Is there a requirement to review site search with this project, for example to add site search directly within your website?

Perhaps, but not necessarily.


> 9) You note possible face-to-face meetings in other email responses. Do you have any idea what country these would take place in? Please note we’re also very happy to do conference calls and use this with many clients.
> 

We are very used to conference calls too. For face-to-face meetings, if those are needed, the country that makes the most sense in terms of cost and practicality will be chosen; not particular preference.


Coralie

> Best wishes,
> Simon
> 
> ---
> Simon R Jones
> Managing Director
> 
> Studio 24
> digital design + technology
> 
> www.studio24.net
> 01223 328017
> 

--
Coralie Mercier  -  W3C Marketing & Communications -  https://www.w3.org
mailto:coralie@w3.org +337 810 795 22 https://www.w3.org/People/Coralie/

Received on Monday, 25 November 2019 13:54:39 UTC