Linking to individual tabs on tabbed content pages

We've recently made some changes to how our tabbed content templates work in the CMS, so it's now possible to link directly to an individual tab, whether that's the careers tab on a course page or the publications tab on a staff profile.

This change also means that as you navigate through multiple tabs on a page, pressing the back button in your browser will now take you to the previous tab you were viewing, rather than the previous page.

Saying goodbye to Internet Explorer 7

I was digging around in Google Analytics last month and noticed a slightly worrying trend: while IE6 usage has gradually been gradually falling to an almost insignificant amount, the number of visits from IE7 users has been showing hardly any sign of waning over the last year, holding steady at around 6% of all our traffic.

Surprisingly, a very large chunk of the IE7 traffic was coming from devices on the University network, even though most people are running either IE8 or 9. It turned out that this was because there's a setting in IE9 to 'Display intranet sites in Compatibility View' (where Compatibility View makes IE9 behave as if it's IE7), and this was enabled by default for york.ac.uk.

A couple of quick emails to IT Services later, and a change was pushed out to all supported desktops to turn this setting off (unless the user had manually set it).

The change was immediate:

Change in internal IE7 traffic after disabling Compatibility View for intranet sites (the regular dips are weekends)

We're now down from 18% to 6% for our internal IE7 traffic, and overall it's come down a couple of percentage points from 6% to 4%.

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.

Welcome to new undergraduates

We've just launched a set of web pages to welcome new undergraduates, giving them easy-to-digest information about everything they need to know before they arrive, that they can dip into as and when.

What looks like a simple set of pages has actually taken about nine months to put together, given the huge amount of content planning that was needed before the web team could start building web pages. 

A small group of people in the Academic Registry spent weeks reviewing what is sent to new undergraduates, when and who by, in an effort to reduce the amount of paper that's posted out and tell people what they need to know in a way that doesn't overwhelm them. The results were translated into a web structure and content by our Internal Comms team.

We want give students a warm welcome before they get to campus, so there are eight short welcome videos from student reps and members of staff - people who new students will regularly hear from or meet when they get here.

But by far the most popular video on the site is the 'Unofficial official guide to the University'. This came from an idea originally suggested by Tim Ngwena while he was YUSU president. He realised that most students don't understand the way the University is organised and how they fit in, and wanted to do something about it. This cartoon is the result.

Put together by Tim (now working for the Alumni team) and talented student cartoonist Hugo Brook, it's been scripted to give a short, friendly, informal guide around the University's structure. Something that could be a very dull read has been brought to life - we think it's brilliant, and we hope you enjoy it too.

The Social Web Team

You can now hear the latest tales from the basement of Heslington Hall on our official Twitter account.

We’ll use it to keep our followers updated about new and current projects we’re working on, the latest news and information from the team, and our thoughts on web issues and developments.

Support queries and requests for work are tough to answer in 140 characters, so please send those to web-office@york.ac.uk as normal.

You can follow us at @UoYwebteam

You can also see the latest University news on the University's official twitter, @UniofYork, and Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/universityofyork.

New Centre for Lifelong Learning site goes live

The redeveloped Centre for Lifelong Learning site is now live, powered by the Web CMS.


Before:

After:

Web CMS Upgrade Coming Soon

We're upgrading Site Manager to Version 7 in June, so here's a quick rundown of the improvements that make it much easier to use.

Big improvements to the look and feel

When you log on to the new version of Site Manager you'll notice a difference immediately. The layout and menus are much clearer and easier to use. You can navigate down into the section you're working on without losing your place, as it no longer refreshes the page. And there's no more Tools menu - you'll find the Media Library under the Content menu.

Improved media library

You can upload an image while you're editing text: just go to the media library from the content edit screen and you'll see a new option there.  It's much easier to find out where photos and files are being used - select a 'usage' tab in the individual media item and you'll see a list of locations.  And find media much more easily by adding keywords when you put them into the media library - you can search on them now.

Drag and drop to move sections

It's really easy to move content around: just pick up a section with your mouse and drag it to where you want it to be. All the links will update automatically.

Save as draft

You can now save a piece of content as a draft - anyone using blogging software will know how handy this is. This means draft content doesn't appear in the approvals queue, so it can't accidentally be published.

Easy to preview your content

There's now an option to preview your page from the drop down menu in the content tab, meaning you don't have to preview while editing the content itself.

We are really excited about these changes because we know they will solve a lot of problems for you.

So when is all this happening?

We are testing the software at the moment and subject to no unforeseen problems, we will work on the upgrade from 09:00 on Monday, 25 June until the evening of Wednesday, 27 June, 2012.  It's a major upgrade and the Web CMS will be out of action for three days: we're giving good notice so you can plan around it and let us know (web-office@york.ac.uk) straight away if the dates clash with a major event within your department.  During the upgrade, all pages produced by the Web CMS will remain visible on the website.  However, it will not be possible to edit content.

We're revising our help pages and training notes, so these will be available for you at the time of the launch of the new software.