University homepage moves to EdWeb

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This major project has been delivered collaboratively by teams within Information Services, including IS Applications and Learning, Teaching & Web’s University Website Programme, with stakeholders from Schools, Colleges and business units around the University.

Why change?

The previous CMS lacked the flexibility we desired. Customising the appearance of our website was costly and slow. Crucially, the old site was not suitable for modern mobile devices.

What’s new?

Using Drupal has allowed us to create a modern, responsive design for the University’s web presence. We now have a site that adapts its layout according to the user’s device and have lead the way for the sector in doing this for the whole site, as a fitting change for a world-leading institution.

We have also created a design framework called EdGEL. GEL meaning Global Experience Language, it allows anyone creating web content for the University to maintain continuity in design with the rest of the University’s website, simply by taking and using the EdGEL design components.

Improved user experience

All of this of course enhances the user experience by providing visual continuity in all aspects of the University’s web presence. As a significant proportion of website traffic to the University is on now mobile devices, having a fully responsive design allows us to better meet our user’s needs.

Drupal

From the development point of view switching to a Drupal-based CMS is a positive step for IS Services. One of the largest open source content management systems in the world, Drupal is open source and allows us to engage with the open source community. The White House use Drupal and if it’s good enough for them…

In adopting Drupal, we are joining a large software development community that is constantly evolving.

“Those are factors that give us the assurance as an organisation that we’ve joined a community with longevity and security. One that will evolve with new technological trends.” – Tim Gray, Senior Project Manager, IS Applications.

Collaboration

We’ve built a user interface that is simple to use and has allowed over 600 editors to easily maintain content across a devolved and very diverse organisation.

EdWeb’s open source model allows a community of users to develop and share expertise within the University.

Parallel to the delivery of the CMS system, we also have a distribution for the code base itself that the academic schools can take and develop for themselves, if they choose not to go with the central service. There is also a standard process for them to feed their experience back into the central service.

“The move to an open source platform that could more easily be used by others within the University heralds a new era of co-operation across what has traditionally been a disparate community. We have sought to find a balance between centralisation and independence to allow a unified look and feel but with scope that allows a higher degree of creativity for individual colleges and schools. This allows each area to develop their site to suit not only their vision and identity while still remaining within a common framework. This is incredibly powerful.” - Heather Larnach, Team Manager, Production Management.