Migrating content from EdWeb and other Drupal sites into the Web Publishing Platform is proving to more difficult than we originally expected. A bit like going from a 10K race to an ultra marathon. So some tough times but also very exciting and satisfying as we solve some very complex problems. Our team is committed to put all the necessary effort and attention to identify the best ways forward. And with every problem solved comes a deeper understanding for the team as a whole.

Executive summary

• 8 sites now live and more to come very soon
• The content migration is proving to much more difficult than we expected.
• We have already changed some dates for site migrations and we may need to do this again.
• Please bear with us and thank you for your patience and support

Going live

The great news is that we now have 8 live sites with more coming very soon.

These are:

• Edinburgh Buddhist Studies
• Website and Communication team
• Design System
• Energy and Society
• Spectrum
• Shine

• Edinburgh Cyber Security, Privacy and Trust Institute

• Traveller Genes

One thing that shouldn’t come as a surprise is that we do some amazing research at Edinburgh University.

Content migration progress update

The content migration is proving to be more difficult than expected but our standards and goal were incredibly high. We are looking to have the absolute minimum of work for Lead Publishers to do after the migration. In all the cases of our first migrated sites we even managed to rebuild the homepages and web forms. Work mainly carried out by our marvellous interns Sun, Nick, Lydia and Aleksandra.

We’ve already had to change a number of planned dates and we may need to do this again. We know this is inconvenient but we hope the approach we have taken will limit this. We’ve been personally reaching out to every single lead publisher and handling every migration on a bespoke individual basis. It’s a lot of work but we are keen to keep relationships intact and really it’s just another aspect of our team trying to be as user centred as possible.

What’s next for the migration schedule

Worst case scenario is that we would need to change some dates for some sites. These are likely to be bigger, deeper and more complex sites using all the functionality that EdWeb has to offer. We’ll be able to continue with some sites as planned so we’ll be updating you with more live sites very soon.

We are also starting to work with some sites on exploring how their site and structure will work with our new navigational approach.

The current plan is still to finish migrating all sites by April 2023. The version of Drupal that EdWeb uses reaches end of life in November 2023 so we have some contingency built in if we needed to go beyond that date.

Features currently in development focus

These are some of the key features we are working on now which are high priority for release too support initial migrations. Initial migrations may require implementation of short term solutions while these features are in development.

• Media Hopper video embed
  • Short term solution – add a call to action button or link to the video on Media Hopper
• Restricted content, e.g. users require an EASE login to view content
  • Short term solution – this content will remain on current EdWeb system until this feature is available
• Image display improvements
  • Some images may need reloaded to the page to improve layout (To be actioned by Lead Publisher), this is due to limitations with an automated migration.
• Reusable contact asset
  • Short term solution – content to be styled in individual feature boxes
• Reusable content assets
  • Short term solution – content to be styled on individual pages
• Training
  • Our training is currently aimed at experienced lead publishers. We are working to update this very soon with a more comprehensive training package which will also cover new users with no prior experience.

Next steps for development

The top priorities to be implemented as soon as possible are:

• Custom JavaScript support
• Web Application support
• Restricted content
• Custom HTML block
• Web form improvements
• Menu and navigational improvements

Previous big move posts

For general information and some answers to our most frequent questions:

The big move – update on moving to our new Web Publishing Platform

Information on why we need to move and what it will entail:

The big move – from EdWeb to our new Web Publishing Platform

Cleaning up your content:

Be a gardener

Information on our research into a new navigational approach:

Comparing a megamenu to a left-hand menu in task-based scenarios using Figma and Maze

For additional information contact us

Please do feel free to contact us at website.support@ed.ac.uk