Hello, registered WSU website creators. I wanted to give you a peak into the future on these topics:
Routine Maintenance
With the winter shutdown fast approaching, we鈥檙e going to need to do a little bit of routine maintenance during that time. This will include breaking and reforming all the links on the whole site. That is, we鈥檒l take all those {{f:13526q345}}-type thingies in the code and turn them into 鈥�/profiles/group/group/This_Person.php鈥�-type thingies in the code. Then we鈥檒l turn around and go backwards and turn them back into {{f:13526q345}}-type thingies (which are actually called 鈥渄ependency tags鈥�). And then we will republish the whole site. This will do two things:
- It will re-connect pages that are not properly linked to with the dependency tags. If a page or image gets moved, the person moving it will know that there are pages using it where it was and they now need to get republished with the new location. When our site was built last year, it initially was set so that links in the Parameters and Multi-Edit weren鈥檛 using dependency tags, so over time as many pages or images have been moved or deleted, there have been no warnings and just an increasing number of errors.
- This will highlight broken links and images on our pages. When we run the dependency scan to re-link the files, it will check to see if something is there. If there鈥檚 nothing, it will publish 鈥渂roken link鈥� highlighted next to the bad link. This looks awful, but it鈥檚 better than suckering a user into clicking on a dead link.
What you need to do to get ready
- Make sure that your pages are checked in. It鈥檚 very easy to open a page and leave it 鈥渃hecked out鈥� for months at a time. There is a Gadget called 鈥淢y Checked-Out Content鈥� that will show you everything you have checked out and let you click on the little lightbulb to check it back in if you aren鈥檛 actively working on it. From the directory view, files that you have checked out are highlighted in yellow and can be checked in by clicking on the lightbulb, but it will only show you files in that directory. The purpose of this is to simply make sure that your pages are actually OK to be published. IF they are not, see step two.
- If you have a page that you鈥檙e working on that you want to make sure it NOT published during this time, send us a message through the form at or at websupport@wichita.edu (the site form is far less likely to get lost in the shuffle, however.) It will get published anyway, but we can go back and revert or unpublish any files we know about.
We will send out a notice the day before we do this.
Web Trainings
We鈥檝e got , and note that we鈥檝e switched up the the days and times to more broadly cover people鈥檚 availability. (Also, the schedule display has been updated to display the training times.)
As always, feel free to . They are, unlike this email, brief and to the point.
Design Changes
There have been some design changes that you probably haven鈥檛 noticed and will be some minor design changes coming in the near future that are mostly little tweaks. We are more or less perpetually refining things, but we don鈥檛 always make a big deal about it. An upcoming one you MAY notice, depending on your attention to detail. The 鈥淚n This Section鈥� menu will have its spinning triangle replaced with a spinning "hamburger.鈥� The 鈥渉amburger鈥� icon 鈥� three horizontal lines 鈥� is universally recognized as a menu icon. The triangle 鈥� well, it was trying to be directional and imply that you could move it, but it doesn鈥檛 really communicate the menu nature of what鈥檚 going on in that spot. So, we鈥檙e swapping it out. It鈥檚 a little thing 鈥� four letters of code 鈥� but it also is a big thing because it requires republishing the entire site. See Routine Maintenance above.
Other changes are, at the time of this writing, also likely to happen over the break, but they are a little more experimental. They will be noticeable when they happen. They may happen at the same republishing time or we may need to republish again towards the end of the break 鈥� or we might not need to republish at all. It just depends on how we ultimately build them.
Feature Improvements
OU Campus 鈥� our content management system 鈥� is scheduled to upgrade to version 10.15 on Friday, Dec. 12 (next Friday). It鈥檚 mostly a bug fix, but it will also EVENTUALLY add the ability to do file uploads in the forms that OU builds. We probably won鈥檛 have that feature right away as it requires some additional configurations on the backend that we won鈥檛 have set up. But it will be coming in the near future.
Unrelated to the OU changes, we will also soon have an improved campus directory on the main website. There will be pages for both faculty/staff people and departments. The people will be pulling from Banner data; the departments will be pulling from a semi-curated list. We鈥檙e still working on the details of this project, too, but it will happen soon.
You can . This is a working search of 3000 faculty and staff (the data is from almost two years ago, so don鈥檛 get excited if people are missing or included who shouldn鈥檛 be or numbers are wrong or whatever). If you take a peak and it鈥檚 broken, well, it is on 鈥渨ww-test鈥� and as such is likely to be in flux at any given time. This will also integrate with the Profiles by matching up the email address in the directory with one in a profile and providing a direct link to the profile, if one is created for that person.