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About Web Development

The web presence for the IU School of Medicine is managed by Marti LaChance, manager, web & electronic communications, and Jeramy Spurgeon, web developer and software trainer.

Our tool-of-choice for building websites is a web content management system or WCMS. Our aim is to enable departments and offices at the medical school to expand and maintain their websites with flexibility and ease.

To keep up with IUSM web development, visit the regularly updated Web Dev and Web Tech blogs, where Marti and Jeramy post the latest happenings.

2011 Summer. Redesigning page templates for the medical school.

2011 Spring. Winding down after Concrete5 migration. Starting a redesign of the IUSM web template.

2010 Summer. The medical school adopts the Concrete5 content management system as its web-building platform. We are excited about using this open-source CMS that is cheaper and more stable than SiteMaker. Even better, we know C5 is easier to use -- and more feature-filled -- than SiteMaker. For current details on the CMS migration project, check the CMS Status blog.

2010 Spring. The medical school web team ran a successful six-site pilot project with Concrete5. Resulting live sites are the Department of Surgery, Dean's Office of Operations, and the Office of Public & Media Relations.

2009 Fall. The IU School of Medicine web team formed a CMS focus group to consider alternatives to SiteMaker. Specifically, we're looking for a cheaper, more stable web development platform. The focus group is considering the following CMS applications:

2009 June. Nearly all medical school website conform to the official IUSM web design. Nearly 70 sites are live in SiteMaker, with more underway. Users include the Medical Libraries, the Departments of Pediatrics and Ophthalmology, regional centers like IUSM South Bend, and administrative offices like the Office of Operations. SiteMaker users naturally comply with the IUSM Web design. For departments who prefer not to join the CMS effort, the school's web team provides an HTML template. 

2009 March. SiteMaker users have access to a secure Document Library module, which enables sites to password-protect documents in PDF, DOC, XLS and other formats.

2009 January. We rolled out our new web design, globally, across all CMS-run sites. Feature highlights include:

2006-2009. In 2006, to unify the IU School of Medicine Web presence, the school developed a Web design policy and adopted a content management system (CMS), a Web development platform, to effect its requirements. Our CMS software is SiteMaker CMS, from MEDSEEK, Inc.

Since going live with the SiteMaker web content management system (CMS) in the fall of 2006, departmental web managers at IUSM have greater control over their web sites, and their sites have a consistent look-and-feel. These were our very goals in implementing a CMS at the medical school.