As we reach the end of a long and complex migration of website content from our Drupal 7 platform, EdWeb 1, to Drupal 10, EdWeb 2, we are reviewing our lessons learned and will adjust our approaches to reflect on them. One key insight was the volume of outdated website content in the platform. This has led to us revisiting how we introduce new websites to the new platform, and we are currently working on a new process to achieve this. 

Current growth of our web estate is unsustainable

Historically, access to create new websites for the central University Website service was not only simple and quick but was also provided without much detail on the type and purpose of the new website request. Essentially, every affiliated member of the University not only has had access to use the service for free, which is appropriate, but was also granted a website to start building without further audit or governance. This has led to unmanaged growth of the size of our published website content. This in turn has led to an estate so large it no longer meets its purpose of offering a place to easily find information, with escalating risks and challenges related to the quality.

The main issues we currently face include:

• A reduction of confidence of compliance with relevant legislation and regulations, such as accessibility and privacy.
• Duplication of content or, more importantly, conflict of information between published on several websites.
• Inaccurate information being displayed due to websites having published out-of-date content.
• Having a significant amount of legacy content on our web estate and central website which is more appropriate to be archived, or removed, rather than being published.
• Increased costs and resource needs to manage a constantly growing website estate.
• A higher carbon footprint, and overall environmental impact, due to more energy being required to store and visit this content.

During the current migration, our team had a chance to audit the vast majority of the content in EdWeb before its migration to our new platform EdWeb 2. This long and detailed exercise has revealed a lot of underlying issues related with the amount of content, which has reinforced the importance and developed our understanding of these issues. 

Improved Web Governance starts from our services

The challenges regarding our Web Estate Governance, on a University level, have been raised several times through our committees, mostly starting from our Web Governance Group. It is only appropriate to lead by example and apply best practice starting from our centrally managed Website Services, and that’s the approach that we are taking regarding the introduction of new websites. Additionally, our team is fully deployed to the web migration project until its completion by the end of February 2025.

For these reasons, we will not be able to support the creation of new websites in EdWeb 2 before we implement a new management process approved by the relevant University’s governance groups. 

This process must ensure the appropriate steps are taken to ensure that these new websites service a purpose, have an appropriate publication timeline and are supported by their respective business unit and key stakeholders, following specified criteria. This approval, and all information related to it, will be recorded to support a transparent decision-making process.

The benefits of this approach will be to address the issues and risks associated with having a very large website estate, assessing all requests for new websites transparently and providing alternative options, if appropriate. 

Formalising our new approach

Our aim is to ensure that we have the support of our key stakeholders to introduce this approach, and to move quickly on its implementation. To achieve this, we will be submitting a paper to the University Web Governance Group and Information Technology Committee. Once approved we will engage with you to introduce and communicate this approach, including inviting early adopters to test it.

If you have already requested a new EdWeb 2 website

Please do not worry. Our team has kept a record of all outstanding requests of new EdWeb websites. You should have had an email about this on November 7th, 2024. All these requests remain on our waiting list, and we will get in touch when we are able to progress. Furthermore, communications about how to request new websites will be communicated widely with our University communities.