Since the introduction of the European Union (EU) cookie legislation in 2013, and after the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) implementation in 2018, the University has taken extensive measures within the central University Website (EdWeb) to reduce the risk of capturing and storing user privacy-invasive data. Additionally, platform-agnostic guidance and support has been available for […]

We have now transitioned to a full home working environment across all of our teams, responding to the UK government’s and University of Edinburgh’s guidance. Even though team members have been working from home on occasions, doing it in this scale is unprecedented. I would like to share what was involved, how we prepared and […]

Working in the open has been a long-standing part of our culture. We have supported and participated in events, used and contributed in open source technologies and resources, and recruited roles focussed in support and adoption of open platforms and practices. It is with great pleasure to see these efforts not only been sustained over […]

The central University Website is the main shop window of The University of Edinburgh. It attracts more than 13 million unique visitors per year, with nearly 40 million visits annually across the globe. It is being used by all of the University’s main audiences (prospective and existing students, academic and professional staff, alumni), for a […]

Most technology horizon reports these days seem to have a common reference: Conversational interfaces. Whether a chatbot, a voice assistant or any other machine-learning driven interface, this appears to be the next frontier in audience engagement. To reflect on this, and how these would be useful in a Higher Education environment, we ran a project […]

The University Web Search is changing on 22 March. It will feature new ways to search content and access results, including autosuggestions and a customised output for profile pages.

The University Website team had the honour to be invited to the inaugural Thunder Day event, organised by the Hubert Burda publishing company in Hamburg, Germany. The main theme of the day was how open collaboration can help when delivering digital content through the web.

Before we turn our attention to the upcoming academic year, our team is taking a step back to review the most significant achievements of 2017. The main areas of focus are on web strategy and governance, continuous work to support the University web development community, EdWeb enhancements and procuring a replacement web search service.

Just before leaving for my summer holidays, I had the great chance to travel to Canterbury and the University of Kent, where the annual Institutional Web Managers Workshop (IWMW for short) was hosted. This was the 21st year for the conference, which underlined the success of this long-standing networking and collaboration opportunity.

I had the chance to attend the inaugural DIGIT Leaders’ Summit at Our Dynamic Earth. This event was focused in how technology has permeated all facets of modern organisations, becoming an equal, if not integral, partner in setting core business strategies.