Web Publishers’ Community – September Update
As the migration to EdWeb passed the halfway mark in September the WPC gathered to hear about the plans for the future of EdWeb.
The flexibility of homepages in EdWeb was also highlighted along with an update of the work currently being carried out on cookie management.
Future Development
Bruce Darby entered the fray to give the WPC an insight into what the future development of EdWeb might look like.
Front-end design changes are high on the agenda with one of the aims to produce a dynamic new layout for The University of Edinburgh homepage when it migrates to EdWeb.
A specific landing page content type, better subsite branding and improvements on the Event content type are also scheduled.
Bruce broadly outlined a couple of compliance issues that need to be tackled to make sure EdWeb stays the right side of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines set down by the government.
Bruce, and the rest of UWP, would also love it if we could cheekily ask you to vote to make the University’s site the ‘Website of the Year’.
Homepage flexibility and branding
Lizzie then demonstrated the flexibility that homepages in EdWeb have and how best you can utilise them.
By making use of the full range of options, including a unique banner and the colour palettes, you can help to create an identity for your site.
Lizzie then went onto show how sites associated with the Edinburgh Medical School retain similar elements in their branding to ensure continuity for the user while the Health Service Research Unit, which is part of the Edinburgh Medical School but a more autonomous unit, sets itself apart using a different colour palette and subsite footer.
Examples of a subsite footer on the Demonstrating EdWeb site
Cookie Management
Stratos stepped up talk about the ongoing work on cookie management that was started by our summer intern, Mattias.
From the cookie crawler built by Mattias, which crawls a website to identify any cookies that may break EU law, the technical team have developed it further to make it more user friendly.
At present they are working to make so that it is accessible on-demand, easy to operate for non-technical users and produces useful reports and data.
Results of beta testing of the system will be shared with the WPC so watch this space!
As ever, if you have any ideas you would be keen to share with the WPC please let us know.
Web Publishers’ Community wiki
