Roxen to Drupal Migration Project - Princeton University · Agenda 1. Overview of the Roxen to Drupal Migration Project 2. Planning - Decisions to make before building a website 3.

Roxen to Drupal Migration Project: What you need to know to make the

most of the migration

Jill Moraca Web Development Services

Office of Information Technology

Agenda 1. Overview of the Roxen to Drupal Migration Project

2. Planning - Decisions to make before building a website

3. Content Strategy - What to do with all your text, images, and files

4. Writing for the Web - How to improve it

5. University Requirements, Recommendations, and Best Practices - the Do's and Dont’s

6. Maintenance - The website is done, now what?

Don’t just move it, improve it!

Overview

• September 2019 = shutdown of Roxen CMS

• All sites must be moved off the CMS

• Help is available

Why shutdown Roxen?

• Roxen CMS is not keeping pace with University needs

• Adding new functionality is difficult

• Support for the CMS is hard to find

Help

• Funding is available to offset the cost (Thank you SAGIT Committee!)

• Web Development Services staff

• Training classes

Funding

To qualify you must:

• Move your website before September 2019

• Move your website to one of the OIT-Managed Systems:

• Template Website System

• Custom Website System

• OpenScholar

Funding categories

• Small Sites… – Up to 8 hours of work covered by fund – Typically move into Template System – Can do-it-yourself

• Medium Sites… – Up to 40 hours of work covered by fund – Typically move into the Template System with some

additional work

• Large Sites… – Up to 100 hours of work covered by the fund – Sometimes move into the Custom System, usually with

additional work

Process

Option 1: DIY 1. Request a Template Site 2. Take the training classes

and/or read the online documentation

3. Get started building at your convenience (before September 2019!)

Option 2: With WDS 1. Fill out the migration

survey 2. WDS will access your

website 3. WDS will provide a

timeline and cost estimate, if any additional costs are expected

4. WDS will work with you to migrate the website

Additional Benefits

• Mobile-friendly website

• Opportunity to clean up outdated content

• Opportunity to implement a site accessible to those with disabilities

• Opportunity to improve your existing website

Don’t just move it, improve it!

Planning

Planning

Before After

Elements of Success

1. Single point of contact 2. Clear goals 3. Time

Single Point of Contact

Goals

• Set clear goals

• Your goals

• Users goals

How will you know that your website is a success?

How will you measure that success?

Time

• Set aside enough time

• Don’t underestimate the content

• Hit your own deadlines

Recap - Elements of Success

1. Single point of contact 2. Clear goals 3. Time

Don’t take my word for it.

Let’s hear from Carla…

The question: Who is doing what in the History department?

The primary audience: prospective graduate students and scholars around the world.

Fall 2014 January-March

2015

April 2015 May 2015 June 2015 July 2015

in-house inventory (me)

(over 500 pages)/

studying other sites (me)

content strategy /

interviews/site

structure –

Jenn Hall starts

(285 hrs)

content clean up

and archiving (GD)

Kelly & Leyshonte

443hrs+ 75hrs

content migration:

Jenn, Kelly & Leyshonte

– Taxonomies: me, Kelly

Content views, etc.

WDS – development/design starts

November 17

2015-Launch

691 hrs.

formal budget

proposal/approval

dept preps and

check ins with Jill

started in-house budget discussions

Chair

Dept Mgr

Content

help

Fa

cu

lty

Sta

ff Ed

itors

ME or ?

• Content hours (including me): over 1000

• In-house project management hours (me): over 1000

• WDS hours: 691

Discussion

Divide into groups of 4-5 people.

Does anyone have an experience they can share where a project went off the rails

because of time?

What happened?

How did you manage it?

Content Strategy

A website without content is…

Website Content - Considerations

1. What do you need to communicate?

2. What other medium are you using to communicate that message?

3. How does the website fit into that?

4. How will you market the website?

Website Content – To Do

1. Inventory existing content

2. Assign ownership

3. Get rid of ROT

4. Reorganize / rewrite content to align with goals

5. Improve the writing

#1 Content Inventory

• Read through every page of your website

• Click on every link

• Create a spreadsheet of the pages

You’ll be surprised at what you find

#2 Assign Ownership

• Who owns the content?

• Who is the subject matter expert?

• Who approves the content before its added to the website?

• Who adds the content to the website?

• How often is it updated / reviewed?

• Do you have a content review schedule?

#3 Get rid of ROT

• ROT = Redundant, Outdated, and Trivial

• Most cases, your website is not an archive

Content – After the inventory

• Are you missing any content that you want users to see?

• Are you missing any content that your users want to see?

• Is your content easy to find?

• Is your content organized in a way that makes sense to your users?

#4 Organize Content

Tips: Information Architecture & Navigation

• Make it intuitive. Avoid “cute” and “fancy”

• Make it visible. Avoid putting key info in a pop up

• Provide context

Remember: Don’t Make Me Think!

Organize Content - Methods

• Post-its

• Index cards

• Online tools

Recap - Website Content

1. Inventory existing content

2. Assign ownership

3. Get rid of ROT

4. Reorganize / rewrite content to align with goals

5. Improve the writing (next topic…)

Writing for the Web

How do people read a website? The Answer is…

“They don’t”

Source: Jakob Nielsen, How Users Read on the Web, October 1997, www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html

Writing for the Web

•What the research says

• Migrating your content

• Your content has been migrated, now what?

What the Research Says

• People scan websites

• Good sites place content where people expect it

• People are more than happy to scroll if they think they’ll be rewarded (information scent)

College Students in Particular

• Use similar techniques used in speed reading when reading online

• Scan pages for keywords and ignore non-critical elements

• Criticize sites that sound too formal, juvenile, or disingenuous

Source: College Students on the Web, Neilsen Norman Group.

How do prospective students use online resources to research universities?

Graphic adapted from Students Online trends report, 2014 in collaboration with www.topuniversities.com

Graphic adapted from Students Online trends report, 2014 in collaboration with www.topuniversities.com

Writing tips….

• People are BUSY

•Nuts & bolts, not poetry

•Scannable!

•Write like a journalist, not an academic

How do journalists write?

• Strong ledes

• Inverted Pyramid

• Simple sentences

• Action verbs

• 8th grade reading level

Give the eye a break

Make text glance-able by breaking up the text with standard design elements including:

• Bullets

• Subheadings

• Hypertexts

• Frequent use of graphic elements

Headings

Use headings to:

• Improve scanning

• Improve search

engine

optimization

• Make your website

accessible

Migrating the content

• Method 1 – copy and paste

• Method 2 – WDS automates some content migration

Most likely you will be working with a combination of both.

Be prepared for some manual cleanup and improvements…

Manual cleanup & improvements

• Check formatting

• Remove extra line breaks

• Check links

• Remove important text content from images

• Make headings

Content Cleanup - Use Headings

Use headings to:

• Improve scanning

• Improve search

engine

optimization

• Make your website

accessible

Requirements & Recommendations

Requirements

• University IT Policy

– Copyrighted material

– Hosting – outside hosting – get approval from OGC.

– Managing Data

http://www.princeton.edu/itpolicy/

Website Requirements

• Office of Communications

– Proper use of University logo and word mark

– Required Elements

– Princeton Editorial Style Guide

http://www.princeton.edu/communications/services/

Accessibility

This is a huge topic! What you must know:

• Use 2 to 3 words to create meaningful links

• Do not put important content into a format that cannot be ready be a screen reader.

• Add alternative text to images.

• Use heading tags

http://webaim.org/standards/wcag/checklist

Maintenance

The website migration is done, now what?

•Create a schedule and periodically review the content

• Check links

• OIT takes care of the system so you don’t have to worry! (security, backups, performance, code updates, etc.)

Last, but not least!

•Put a proper redirect in place

Email [email protected]

If you add your own redirect into Roxen, it will be deleted when the system shuts down!

Questions?

For more information:

drupal.princeton.edu/roxen-migration

___________________

Jill Moraca

Manager, Web Development Services

[email protected]

8-6907