A wrong decision early in the design process can mean the difference between publishing a site in 30 minutes and publishing a site in 3 days–and since all clients want instantaneous results 3 days is never an option.  A strong site infrastructure will also allow greater flexibility in the future for adding the ever-evolving array of ‘bells and whistles’ that the web revolution presents us.

Here are a few tips we like to hand out to our clients early in our talks and others we enforce in-house with our development team:

Do not be afraid to create more than one index block
What’s the most efficient number? One, right? If I just create one index block that indexes my whole site I can use it over and over again, wherever I want without having to worry about creating multiple index blocks, right? Wrong.

An index block of your entire site has one purpose, a site map.  If you’re using a block of that type anywhere else, chances are your Cascade Server experience is unnecessarily slow and cumbersome.  Create multiple index blocks tailored to each use.  Create one for a dynamic left navigation menu, name it ‘left-nav.’ Create one for your breadcrumbs, name it ‘breadcrumbs.’  Create one for your news index page, name it ‘news-index.’ I could go on and on.  Using multiple index blocks in your system ensures that you’re not indexing your entire site two times over every time you want to view or publish a page that contains a left navigation menu and breadcrumbs. A 200 page site that uses a whole site index to render just those two regions will have to compile the XML for the entire site 400 times for every full-site publish–not to mention that you will lose any cache almost instantaneously as the index block will need to be rebuilt with every system edit.

Limit index blocks to metadata only, wherever possible
When you begin modeling your data, it’s best to put fields that you will likely want to reuse elsewhere on your site within a metadata set, adding dynamic fields to a custom Metadata Set if needed.  It’s a good idea to place your metadata ‘Title’ and ‘Display Name’ fields inline to force your content contributors to input relevant data in those fields for easy indexing and reuse elsewhere in your site.

Adopting this standard means that the majority of your index blocks can be set to return only the XML from the page’s metadata, eliminating the vast majority of the page content (most of which will be unneeded for your purposes and would cause the index block to grow rapidly and exponentially over time).

In-house we use the ‘Display Name’ field to create any navigation menu or for breadcrumbs and use the ‘Title’ field when constructing things like press release index pages.  If you’re creating a staff directory you may want to add custom metadata fields for a staff member’s first and last name and job title so that you can pull that to a centralized directory more easily.

It’s also a good idea to keep in mind certain fields that can’t be added to metadata, like file choosers for images and custom date fields, so when you’re modeling what data to reuse elsewhere in your site you can weigh the indexing implications for including that type of data.  Typically, if I can’t model the data as metadata, I try to avoid situations where I will need to index it.

Use Content Type indexing
If you just want to create a listing of all your press releases, why would you want to include anything that’s not a press release in your index block to begin with?   If you created a press release content type for all those press releases then you have an option available that will make it easy to do just that. Content Type indexing allows you to specify an index block that returns data from only a certain Content Type within Cascade Server.

Instead of using folder-based indexing, content type index blocks allow a single database query to return all your press releases (or any other specified Content Type) much more efficiently.  This will exclude ancillary data, like images and other supporting pages, from being returned in the XML as well.

Keep an eye on your folder structure
Within Cascade Server, a well-designed and logical folder structure is key to operating an optimized website.  Not only do folder paths affect site URLs (important in SEO) but logical organization of content can also keep your indexing load times down and your system’s performance up.  While Content Type indexing is a great new tool introduced by Hannon Hill, it is not applicable everywhere.  For dynamically generated navigation regions, it will still be necessary to use standard folder-based index blocks.

Making sure similar content is grouped together will mean that you can create an index of one folder, instead of twelve–an obvious savings.  Staff profiles should be grouped in one folder, i.e., /profiles. News articles can be grouped into a directory named /news.  Feel free to subdivide those folders into smaller divisions, but this method works better than having doctor profiles in /doctor/profiles and nurse profiles in /nurse/profiles which would require you to set your folder index further up the hierarchical tree.

Make the folder tree your friend
Cascade Server index blocks aren’t always designed to cascade down your folder tree from top to bottom.  In certain situations you’ll want to start indexing down the tree and work your way back up, especially for breadcrumb-type functionality.

Working your way back up the tree, by selecting a rendering option that starts at the current page, allows you to eliminate indexing of any content below your current location in the folder structure and also will reduce the XML of many unnecessary sibling assets from bogging down the index.

Don’t forget about block choosers
It’s good to have a very flexible application like Cascade Server as it allows you the freedom to accomplish almost anything you could want to do in the web environment, but it may also lead you into situations where you realize you’ll need to perform some voodoo to keep your users whizzing along in the system.

Maybe you’ve worked yourself into a position where you want to aggregate content from a number of places within your site’s folder structure.  You’re thinking, ‘well I don’t want to do it, but it looks like a full site index block is the only way to get the information I need.’ Wrong, again.  Luckily.

If you’re faced with a page that needs to pull content from disparate corners of your website, create a data definition with a few block choosers.  Create individual index blocks that index each of the folders you need, then link them to your data definition and use a ‘current page’ index block to return all that XML that you need, and none of it that you don’t.  You can even restrict those block chooser fields to certain groups in Cascade Server so that an overzealous content contributor doesn’t undo all your genius design.

Remember as you start out on your site construction that it is never too early to think about future scalability.  Always think about how a decision you make now will affect your site and your users two to three years in the future.  It’s the same principle as compounding interest in your 401(k), though not as sexy.  Decisions you make today wil have lasting ripple effects years from now.  Making sure you’ve thought through your indexing needs and picked the correct strategies will mean less headaches, and more kudos, as long as your website is out there informing the world.  Who knows, your server administrator may even buy you lunch in appreciation.

The Cascade Experts team is proud to say we have long realized that our strength as an organization comes from creating a culture where the client comes first and we proactively listen to your needs.  It is important for us to create an atmosphere where we think of ourselves as a partner rather than a vendor. With this philosophy, your challenges during these tough economic times are our challenges and it is our responsibility to deliver successfully.

With Cascade Server projects in mind, we are taking the management of projects to a new level by extending our current project philosophies to include Six Sigma concepts and methodologies.   These methods are used by America’s most recognizable organizations such as Textron, GE, Motorola, Amazon, and Dell, and Cascade Experts believes that Six Sigma is a project methodology that strives for perfection.

So what exactly is Six Sigma?

Six Sigma is a rigorous and disciplined methodology that uses data and statistical analysis to measure and improve  operational performance by identifying and eliminating “defects” in manufacturing and service-related processes. Commonly defined as 3.4 defects per million opportunities, Six Sigma can be defined and understood at three distinct levels: metric, methodology and philosophy.  The word Sigma is a statistical term that measures how far a given process deviates from perfection. The basic idea behind Six Sigma is that if you can measure the number of “defects” in a process, you can systematically figure out how to eliminate them. This will help you get as close to “zero defects” as possible, thus insuring a project thats completed on time, on budget, and with a high level of quality.

At its core, Six Sigma revolves around a few key concepts….

• Critical to Quality: Attributes most important to the customer
• Defect: Failing to deliver what the customer wants
• Process Capability: What your process can deliver
• Variation: What the customer sees and feels
• Stable Operations: Ensuring consistent, predictable processes to improve what the customer sees and feels
• Design for Six Sigma: Designing to meet customer needs and process capability

What this means for your project…

• Each engagement will begin with the definition or initiation of the project.  With this, the project team will be defined and their various roles will be assigned.
• We define the project plan and scope of the effort in Cascade Server terms. This includes defining the requirements of the effort you manage. Explore the priority of each requirement and assign a cost and time estimate to each.
• We will determine how each task within the project will be measured for success. Establish checkpoints throughout the project to ensure the project is on track and meeting the quality levels you’ve established.
• The project will be executed with a defect identification and resolution process in place. Identify potential risks that could occur and how you’ll mitigate those risks should they occur.
• We will provide continuous reporting to the project owner and team on the progress of the project including the points of risk. We will also monitor how your project is doing compared with the plan including finances and resources.
• A review at the end of the project will be conducted to see how your project did in comparison with the plan and what could be done better in the future.

In conclusion…

If you are one who thought that Six Sigma was only for large corporations, you’re not alone. Many people believe that Six Sigma process improvement results can only be achieved by huge organizations. What they don’t realize is that any organizaion can benefit from having their projects managed with Six Sigma methodologies.  As your partner, your success is our success and we believe this is another tool that will create additional value for your organizaion.

So, we ask…Who would you trust?