Nestled in the heart of the Adirondack Park in upstate New York, Paul Smith’s College isn’t your typical liberal arts college. Surrounded by the natural beauty and diverse wildlife of the Adirondacks, Paul Smith’s provides students with a one-of-a-kind college experience. Director of Communications and Marketing Ken Aaron wanted to bring that experience to life on paulsmiths.edu. Ken had a limited budget, a small content editing team, and a tight timeline for implementing their new website. Buzzr Higher Ed was just right for Paul Smith’s.
If you work for a small college or university like Paul Smith’s, Buzzr Higher Ed might be for you too. Consider these questions:
- Do you want a dynamic, polished web presence, and a very easy and reliable way for individuals on campus to manage and update your website?
- Does it concern you that visitors to your site have the same expectations they have for websites of larger schools with more funding and more staff? Are you concerned about the cost and custom implementation of an enterprise CMS?
- Is your team motivated, ready, and hoping to move quickly to relaunch your website?
If you nodded your head yes to these three questions, Buzzr Higher Ed might be a good choice. Buzzr Higher Ed provides smaller institutions with the benefits of an open- source, Drupal-based CMS that can be implemented in a fraction of the cost and time of a custom Drupal website. It also has an easy-to-use interface layer on top of Drupal, which makes it easy for non-technical people to get into the CMS and edit content. Buzzr also has the added benefit of ongoing support and maintenance from mStoner. If Paul Smith’s ever decides they want a fully optimized Drupal site, it’s easy to transfer from Buzzr.
Buzzr offers an array of essential and most-used tools for education sites:
- Responsive web layout
- Configurable widgets and layouts via drag-and-drop
- Icon-based graphical interface
- Inline editing options throughout the site
- Random or rotating image slideshows and feature stories
- Social media integration and sharing
- Tagging system for content
- Built-in site search
- SEO tools
- Event calendar
- Easy-to-manage user permissions
Buzzr also has the added benefit of ongoing support and maintenance from mStoner. If Paul Smith’s ever decides they want a fully optimized Drupal site, it’s easy to transfer from Buzzr.
Built on the Buzzr CMS, the new Paul Smith’s College website incorporates a new information architecture and fresh content that focuses on the College’s brand and the distinctions of a Paul Smith’s education. Ken Aaron summarizes, “Thanks to mStoner’s collaborative process, we worked together to create a beautiful, sustainable website that will grow with us.”
A free webinar will feature mStoner Senior Strategist Susan T. Evans and Paul Smith’s Ken Aaron as they chat about how mStoner helped the College address core challenges and why Buzzr was right for paulsmiths.edu. The free webinar will be held on Friday, May 2 at 2:00PM Eastern. Registration is required. Join us!
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