What is Cascade?

Cascade is a web content management system (CMS) — a tool that allows you to easily publish your content to the web, without the technical expertise. There are many content management systems out there. Cascade is one that works particularly well for higher ed.

Here are a few of the key benefits of Cascade CMS:

• User-friendly interface that can be accessed from any computer with Internet access (i.e. you can log in from any computer), with no software to buy or install.
• Built-in design templates for a consistent look and feel.
• “Versioning” means past versions of each page are archived and available.
• Built-in accessibility checks.
• Automatic link checking and spell check features.
• If the CMS application is unavailable for any reason, your site is still up and available.
• Built-in site preview lets you see it before you publish.

How does Cascade CMS work?

Cascade is an application that runs on a server maintained by ITS. When you publish your content using the application, it is posted to public-facing web servers.

A few things users should know:

• You don’t need any additional software, other than your web browser (Internet Explorer not recommended).
• Your changes are never visible by the public until you hit the “Publish” button.
• If the CMS has an outage, your web site is not affected — the public sites live on a separate web server.