Communicate or Die Checks Out LaborWeb

Yesterday I attended a webinar run by AFL-CIO Online Mobilization Manager Chris Kenngot on the national fed's new LaborWeb content management system - now running in open beta and available for all interested AFL union leadership to try for free.

Built over the last couple of years using the American Federation of Teachers' StateWeb as a template, the AFL started the CMS project after doing an inventory of state labor federations and central labor councils and finding that many of them didn't have a website - or if they had one, finding that it was often very pretty with out-of-date content or very old-fashioned with little functionality. They created a system run off of servers controlled by AFL national with 3 tiers of system user accounts. Tier 1 is for national unions and the national federation, Tier 2 is for state federations, and Tier 3 is for CLCs and locals. Each participant labor body gets a free website on the system upon request, and logs into their account at laborweb.aflcio.org to use their site. The tiered design was created both to act as a sort of intranet for information sharing between the 3 tiers, but critically to help many smaller locals (some without staff) keep their site content fresh by being able to avail themselves of content sent downstream by higher level sites. Most commonly, the national fed will feed material from their websites to the entire system. Each state fed, CLC or local can then decide which content to post and which to ignore. The national is also working on a social networking system (sort of like a labor Facebook) to go along with this site interconnectivity for testing in the near future. Contact info for each site is distributed from the national's central database, and users can change their site contact info by clicking a link from their administration page to send an update message to the national. So site construction and use is simple by design. Each site admin - at whatever level - logs into their account. They are taken to their administration page which has several clearly marked choices in a top menu bar and a center column. To set up a new site, admins will choose from 1 of the 14 available templates - which are blocky and basic like the templates of many content management systems - featuring 3-column layouts with a top and bottom banner. They will then choose a logo for their site, or work with the LaborWeb staff to convert an existing logo for use on the system. Then they can choose from an array of large colorful buttons to add to their left-menu bar and bottom banner - which are simple links to campaigns and services of interest that Labor Web makes available. Only 1 of these, a Union Plus button, automatically shows up on every site - since Union Privilege (the company that manages the AFL's Union Plus benefits) has heavily backed the project since its inception. A sign up box appears on the right column of every site, and the site menu bar appears in the left hand column. After the basic look-and-feel is set up, site admins can add articles using what amounts to a fairly standard (if simplified) multimedia blog template. They can also create new pages (or "categories" as they are called) and put other content there - including photo albums. One of the standout features of the article posting interface is its 3 tools for connecting files, external links and related articles to stories found under the upload file asset section of the administration page. Documents of various file types can be posted to an article using the "article assets" tool. External links are handled by a tool of the same name. And the "related articles" tool lets posters link an article to similar articles published to the site. The LaborWeb user system allows site admins to change access levels for each user that signs up for a site, and to delete users who improperly sign up or violate site usage rules. The current levels are admin, editor, contributor, and user (to be followed shortly by a visitor access level). Of note, it will soon be possible for site admins to integrate their user list with the AFL's E-Activist program. Each article posted to the site can be set for viewing by users above a certain access level - allowing for different viewing experiences for each type of user. A visitor might see certain content on a site, a user more, a contributor more still and so on. This will allow users to, for example, make certain internal documents only viewable by union members. Site admins can either use the provided URLs with their LaborWeb site or have their existing URLs forward to their site by talking to the staff at any time. LaborWeb is slated for full launch soon, but for the moment the system is being used and tested by a growing number of labor organizations. Early reviews, if other attendees on the webinar that already have LaborWeb sites are any judge, are positive. Although one could certainly quibble with the national fed about their choice to build a proprietary system rather than using one of a number of robust open source CMS options, the LaborWeb staff is quick to point out that use of the system is voluntary and any AFL labor entity that wishes to keep its own existing site is free to do so. Overall the system does seem to deliver on its promise to provide a reasonably robust labor-oriented content management system that everyone from tech newbies to tech savants will have no trouble setting up and using to create functional, decent-looking websites that are easy to update with a constant stream of easily accessible fresh content. AFL union officials and techies interested in participating in an upcoming LaborWeb training webinar can go to http://www.unionvoice.org/ct/YdzE5X71Mupf/ to sign up. Expect more info on LaborWeb from Communicate or Die in the weeks to come.