We are currently in the process of migrating all websites from Polopoly into EdWeb – our new Drupal-based Content Management System. Two small migration phases are now complete but we still have a long way to go.

Experience gained, alongside a feedback session and an in-depth review of the process, has allowed the migration to be refined and improved, ready for the next batch of sites due to be migrated at the beginning of March 2015.

15 sites are now live in EdWeb after two successful migration phases and delivery of our Minimum Viable Product. That’s business speak for when you’ve done enough development to actually release your software out into the wild. Those 15 sites are made up of 7 business areas (14 sites in total + our own website) spread over the University hierarchy.

These were all successfully migrated into EdWeb between December 2014 and January 2015.

So far our MVP CMS has the following functionality:

CMS processes prioritised for editors

• Significantly more editing done in a “wysiwyg” style editor.
• Cleverer pasting
• Autosave features
• Autogenerated views of content
• Top task dashboard
• Bulk upload of media

Content sharing

• Flagging for better ‘findability’

Site organisation

• Filtered tree views

Priority structured content

• Generic, staff profiles, news, event
• Most common media

The essentials you’d expect

• Workflow & permissions
• Previews
• Version control
• Analytics on all pages
• Accessibility & code standards

We’ll be continuing development right up to the end of July 2015.

Improvements to our migration process

We are now refining our process and have made a few changes along the way. We’ve extended our migration timeslots as two weeks was just a bit too tight. So now each website has been given a 3 week migration timeslot. During this time we recommend a complete change freeze. Updates in Polopoly are possible but won’t be migrated over into EdWeb.

Each week of the timeslot breaks down as follows:

Week 1 – UWP auto-migration

This involves a series of checks, tests and quality assurance before the content is moved into the live environment.

Week 2 – UWP editorial work and EdWeb training.

Our team of 7 editors will tidy up the site, build the homepage and overview pages, add images and check content.

During this week the lead publisher and their team will be trained in the new EdWeb CMS.

Week 3 – Site handover

Following training and the editorial tidy up the site will be handed back to the lead publisher to give them just over a week to make any essential changes to the site. UWP technical team will do any necessary preparation and scheduling work to make sure the site goes live the following Tuesday.

The migration has been spread over 5 phases:

Updated migration resources

We’ve also started to update our migration resources.

Individual checklist wiki pages

Going forward an individual wiki page has been created for every site being migrated. This logs all communication between everyone who is involved in the migration. It also contains all the key dates, checklists of tasks and sign off milestones.

Migration handbook

The handbook was overhauled and updated to reflect any new and refined processes. For example new guidance on the migration of unpublished content, clearer guidance on providing new images and the migration of documents.

All in all we are very pleased with our progress so far and once again we would like to thank all our colleagues around the University for their patience, support, help and feedback.

Migration handbook wiki (requires EASE login)