Introducing a quick(ish) modernisation of the website

Five years ago the proportion of people visiting the university’s website on a mobile or tablet device was just 2%. It’s now over 25%. The need for our website to work better on a range of different devices is obvious.

One of our aims for this year is to update the current site to be responsive: that is, to fit to whatever screen it is displayed on whether that’s a mobile, tablet or computer. We blogged before Christmas about our plans for rolling out new responsive page templates and what we’re introducing today is part 3 of that plan - an incremental improvement to existing pages that can be applied to all CMS pages.

The new study pages, as they appear on different sized devices

We’ve developed new styles for existing CMS-published web pages which do two key things. First, they now work better on smaller devices. Second, they incorporate new fonts and colours to make for more cohesive user journey around the site. At this time we haven’t incorporated departmental colours, but options for colour will follow in the future.

Give us your feedback

We have a test version of the website at which you can preview the new design and send us your feedback. To access the test site, which is available on the University network only (including via the VPN if you’re off site), go to the page you are interested in on the main website and replace the www in the website address with cmsmigrate. So, for instance, if you want to try out www.york.ac.uk/about/ you would change the address in your browser to read cmsmigrate.york.ac.uk/about/.

Once you’re on the test site and looking at a CMS-published page that’s affected by the new designs, you’ll see a toggle switch in the top right-hand corner. Clicking it will turn on the new styles for you.



If you make your browser window narrower or wider you’ll see the layout adapt to the size of the window.



If you visit cmsmigrate.york.ac.uk on a mobile or tablet and turn the new styles on you’ll see that the content automatically adapts to the size of the screen.

Have a look around and let us know if you spot any issues by clicking the ‘Leave Feedback’ button in the bottom right-hand corner.' We’d really value your input.

What next?

We’re hoping to start rolling out these new designs very soon on an opt-in basis for the different sections of the site. If you’re involved in maintaining your department’s web pages, we have a separate blog post for you about preparing for, testing and activating the new designs.