Back in September 2016, the University initiated a procurement exercise to replace its current central search engine. As we are nearing on deciding the successful vendor, it’s a great time to provide a project review, revisit the vision and explore the opportunities this new search engine will present.

This month’s WPC session focused on using short URLs, human centred design processes being developed for the University and a guide to getting started with Drupal development.

Starting life as an Asset and Style Library for EdWeb the Edinburgh Global Experience Language (EdGEL) is evolving into a Code Agnostic Framework with built in processes and global standards compliance.

We have a new tool to help us speed up the process of adding redirects to EdWeb. As such, we are formalising the process for how to request redirects.

This month’s WPC session focused on Google Analytics events, the beginnings of a User Experience service at the University, the Edinburgh Global Experience Language (EdGEL) and improvements to the PURE widget interface.

We recently launched a new contact form for IS Helpline, which aims to reduce support calls by providing links to self-service help pages. We are looking to expand this functionality as a service to other University departments.

One of the problems often reported by developers using the EdWeb distribution is the time it takes to get up and running, even for early development and testing work. We decided to use Docker to create UoE Docker, which sets up an EdWeb distribution quickly by building an image of it.

This month’s WPC session introduced us to new features coming soon in EdWeb, new tools for developing in Edweb and ways to keep up with future developments. We also gained insight into keeping our websites efficient and up to date.

This month’s WPC session focused on remote user testing in EdWeb, our search procurement project and using the Handlebars JS Framework. Web Publishers’ Community January 2017 presentation slides

We are nearing the end of 2016. This provides us with a great opportunity to review our actions, highlight our achievements, learn from our experiences and set our goals for more success in 2017. These are just a few (but definitely the most significant) areas we worked to develop and improve this year.