Web Publishers’ Community – March update
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.
Web Publishers’ March 2017 presentation slides
EdWeb CMS Update – Bruce Darby
Bruce Darby gave us an update on recent EdWeb developments and explained where to look to find out more about future plans.
Profile improvements
We’ve begun a project to enhance the profile content type, adding in options for PhD students and pulling in more information from PURE.
The project will also improve profile overview tables to be much more customisable.
Keeping up to date
Bruce highlighted how to keep up to date with EdWeb developments and learn about future plans.
The Website Programme Blog has regular deployment updates.
The EdWeb roadmap is a project board describing past, present and future developments of EdWeb.
There is a Road Map summary which provides a quick, high level overview of the road map.
Or to get into even more detail than the road map, the full release schedule is available on our technical wiki.
How to get a grip of your website (and then keep hold) – Neil Allison
Neil Allison reprised his excellent presentation on getting a proper handle on your website.
He highlighted the benefits of addressing the following points when it comes to managing 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.
You can read a full transcript of the presentation in Neil’s blog post.
How to get a grip of your website (blog post with slides)
UoE Docker – Callum Kerr
Callum Kerr gave us a sneak-peek at the UWP technical team’s use of Docker with EdWeb.
Docker is a virtual machine manager and provides a fast way to set up installations of the EdWeb Distribution for development work. By downloading and running a ready-made “dockerfile”, anyone will be able to set up a fully functioning EdWeb development environment in a matter of minutes. Docker works on various platforms including MacOS, Linux and Windows 10.
Callum demonstrated the system by running the Dockerfile which the team have created. It set up a virtual machine, fetched all the required components, installed them and then fully configured everything. This created a complete development environment and took about 10 minutes to run!
If you are as impressed as I am with the abilities of this preview version, there are still a few places available on a series of workshops on Wednesday 15th March which will guide you through setting up your own copy of the finished product.
Book on EdWeb development environment set up using Docker
JavaScript in EdWeb – Duncan MacGruer
Duncan MacGruer introduced us to the new ability to add javascripts which is coming soon to EdWeb. He gave us an overview of the process to bring new scripts into EdWeb, and demonstrated how they will be applied to pages within a site.
Several scripts will be available right away including a sign-up form for Dotmailer, which is email marketing software, and Click4Assistance, which adds the ability to have live chats with visitors to your site.
Scripts can be added to a single page or to a whole site. Smaller chunks of javascript called JS Widgets can be added that will then be available for use for all members of a group from within the CK editor.
This functionality will be included in the EdWeb update deployment on the 16th of March.
Next WPC
Join us at our next Web Publishers’ Community, on March 29th 2017.
