Web Publishers’ Community – December update
The final WPC session of 2015, focused on how best to maintain your University website, EdGEL, the Edinburgh Global Experience Language, as well as Bruce’s regular EdWeb project update.
EdWeb Project Update – Bruce Darby
The EdWeb enhancements project’s first deployment is scheduled for 14 December. Developments will include updates to subsite branding, homepage functionality, the global footer and accessibility refinements.
Read the detail about these developments, in particular the University homepage enhancements funded by CAM and the opportunities they bring for all of us managing EdWeb sites, in Bruce’s slides on the WPC wiki and Neil’s post about the global footer.
WPC December 2015 session wiki page
Global footer updates blog post
The new subsite branding updates will allow users to add an optional, customisable area to the top right of the site banner. This update is great news for departments looking to prominently feature logos from external funding partners on their site.
Around 6000 pages have been migrated in Phase 5 so far, with another 1500 set to migrate before the December break. Plans for the University homepage build will start in the new year and the page is scheduled to go live in mid-April 2016.
EdWeb awards update
The University of Edinburgh website sadly didn’t win in the Website of the Year awards, but a big thank you to everyone who voted.
As mentioned in Bruce’s blog post from last month though, we’re not too downhearted as we have received recognition from the Scottish Drupal community – EdWeb won the award for ‘Best Public/Not for profit Drupal website’ category at the Scottish Drupal Awards 2015 last month.
DrupalCamp Scotland award blog post
How to get a grip of your website – Neil Allison
In our first talk, Neil shared thoughts, tips and guidance on how to best manage and maintain your website to get the most from your efforts. He highlighted the benefits of clear objectives and the value to site owners of addressing the following points when it comes to managing their sites:
- What should we be doing?
- How well are we currently doing it?
- Shaping the site to deliver outcomes
- Appraising effectiveness, ongoing improvements
Site owners, along with stakeholders, need to have a shared vision and set of objectives for what they want to achieve with their website and review current site provision before making changes.
When it comes to structuring your site, Neil highlighted tips such as the importance of starting to write content before finalising the site structure so as to not end up with more content than necessary. Once changes are live, it is crucial to regularly appraise your website in order to evaluate its effectiveness and make improvements where necessary.
UWP can help site owners with each of these steps through our various services:
- Website audit tools & reports
- Personas development
- Analytics
- Usability testing
- Website (re)development in EdWeb
- Website maintenance
You can find out more about our services on our website or contact us to discuss your needs.
University Website Programme website
Contact the University Website Programme
One of the most important takeaways from Neil’s talk was his point that maintaining a website should be thought of as a process, not a project with a start and end point. Don’t wait until your site is perfect to make changes live. Publish when you feel it is good enough and use your appraisals to decide how best to move forward with your site.
How to get a grip of your website blog post
EdGEL – Stratos Filalithis
The Edinburgh Global Experience Language (EdGEL) is the University’s responsive design language and front-end development framework for websites and applications.
EdGEL is a combination of techniques, technologies, frameworks and design elements that work together to provide the foundations of the University’s digital language. EdGEL is available now for you to apply to your digital developments. Find out how on the EdGEL website.
January WPC
Join us at our next Web Publishers’ Community session in January. We’ll be in touch with the date soon but meanwhile please contact us if you have an idea for a presentation or anything you’d like to share.
