New staff homepage

Following the launch of the improved current students site last October, we’ve been working on making a lot of the functionality from the student homepage available to staff too. Due to go live mid-September, the new staff homepage will include:

• Personalised content including your timetable, library record and news from YorkExtra. This will be particularly valuable as the desktop widget for YorkExtra is no longer available for PCs that have been upgraded to Windows 7.
• Upcoming public lectures, latest press releases and the University Magazine.
• Quick contacts search and quick links to core services.
• A refreshed design throughout the staff site, providing quick access to frequently used services and content from every page.
• Improvements to the search facility to bring you more relevant results.

Content from the current site can now be accessed from the left-hand menu and footer. We hope that the homepage will be a useful starting point for staff, giving them an overview of what’s going on at the University.

Links on the current homepage are now available via the left-hand navigation

The development for this is continuing alongside development of the student site as a collaboration between the Web Office and IT Services.

Your feedback is essential to us creating an effective site for staff. You can send it to us via email to web-office@york.ac.uk or, once it’s launched, via feedback form.

We're hiring!

Web Projects Assistant  (Ref: 2165)

The University is in the midst of a major redevelopment of its website, including migration to a web content management system and development of numerous supporting web applications.

One important strand of this work is the development of a completely revised student-facing website. The enhanced student site will provide personalised news, alerts and links to relevant content in addition to a full range of information to support students throughout their University lives. A one year temporary post has been created which offers exciting opportunities to play a key role in this ambitious project. 

The purpose of this role is to provide support to team members working on the student website and other projects. This will involve working closely with the team and colleagues in the Web Office on iterative design, implementation and assessment of web-based products and working with internal customers to support their web-based activities.

We are looking for someone with experience of producing high quality, professional and engaging websites. You should have the ability to write and edit high quality web content and a solid understanding of HTML, CSS and basic JavaScript.  Excellent communication skills and a keen interest in the web are a must.

The role would be ideal for a recent graduate.  It will also be of interest to other candidates looking to gain experience of working on a large, high traffic site.

Previous applicants for this post need not apply.

Salary will be within the range £23,121 - £28,401 per year.  The post is available immediately for a period of up to 12 months.

Further information is available via http://www.york.ac.uk/jobs/

Signing up for Google Apps - a look behind the scenes

Posted on our Enhancing the University of York's student website blog:

• Signing up for Google Apps - a look behind the scenes

Job opportunity - come and join us!

Web Projects Assistant: (Ref: 2052)

The University is in the midst of a major redevelopment of its website, including migration to a web content management system and development of numerous supporting web applications.

One important strand of this work is the development of a completely revised student-facing website. The enhanced student site will provide personalised news, alerts and links to relevant content in addition to a full range of information to support students throughout their University lives. A one year temporary post has been created which offers exciting opportunities to play a key role in this ambitious project.

The purpose of this role is to provide support to team members working on the student website and other projects. This will involve working closely with the team and colleagues in the Web Office on iterative design, implementation and assessment of web-based products and working with internal customers to support their web-based activities.

We are looking for someone with experience of producing high quality, professional and engaging websites. You should have the ability to write and edit high quality web content and a solid understanding of HTML, CSS and basic JavaScript.

Excellent communication skills and a keen interest in the web are a must.

Salary within the range: £22,971 - £28,251 per annum.

Closing date for applications: Monday 24 October 2011.

Further information is available via http://www.york.ac.uk/jobs/

Enhancing our website for current students

We've been busy over the last couple of months working on improving our website for our current students, which we're planning to launch at the start of October.

The existing site for current students

The enhancements are going to make the site more personalised and dynamic, giving students quicker and easier access to the content and systems they need, and will have a distinct design to set it apart from the University's external facing web content.

You may have heard this being referred to as the Portal project - we're trying to avoid using the "P" word though, as there are already a lot of other portals around the University.

We've set up a dedicated blog about the project, where we've been posting updates and background info. We've just posted an August 2011 progress update, so you can see how things are shaping up.