Our monthly Web Publishing Community meetings provide a convivial forum for the University’s web managers, editors and developers to discuss current projects and new opportunities.

Yesterday’s well-attended meeting, included the regular updates on the Drupal project, focusing on rollout planning and homepage options, as well as a presentation by Damon Querry from CMVM on their use of the Lothian Bus Tracker API.

Drupal update

Bruce Darby updated the group on how the Drupal rollout has been planned, and how it is expected to progress. The first sites, can be expected from October 2014 onwards, and will continue to be added, depending on site complexity, to the end of 2015, with the emphasis on matching sites to available functionality.

Following up on last month’s WPC session, Neil Allison introduced further aspects of the Drupal editorial experience. This month, Neil demonstrated the new Overview and Homepage options. Details from content pages will now be pulled through to Overview pages, eradicating the previous (laborious) task of adding ‘Info’ boxes to each Overview page. Additionally, there will be the option to add an ‘Associated image’ to a content page, which would show on the Overview page and, if desired, on the content page itself.

Homepages, meanwhile, will be selected from a number of templates – the number of which will increase as more functionality is added. Neil demonstrated the possible layouts and the way in which this would translate to mobile devices.

University Website Programme – Drupal CMS

User testing

After a tea and biscuit break, Neil stepped up once more to report on the recent user testing which the Website Programme commissioned to test alternative navigation options on mobile devices and computer screens, and shared some of his top tips for carrying out user testing.

Website support wiki – research and appraisal resources

Lothian Bus Tracker

The final presentation, which had caused considerable excitement within UWP, was by Damon Querry, who gave an insight into how the CMVM have developed a widget from the Lothian Bus Tracker API which enables live bus timetabling data to be displayed on screens around campus sites. The presentation gave an interesting overview of this useful application which could potentially be used elsewhere within the University.

The next WPC session takes place 26 June. Details will be posted on the WPC wiki along with presentations from the last session.

Web Publishing Community wiki