One year on from launch, find out how Imperial launched a new website redesign and a TERMINALFOUR implementation which offers flexibility for web editors within a strong institutional branding framework. Learn how the team manages content and input types, edit rights and access control as well as its experiences of handling the migration of some 60,000 pages into the system.

1. Creating and managing a flexible
site for 1,000 editors
Pamela Agar – Head of Digital and Creative Media, Communications and Public Affairs
Manjuka Tennakoon - Product and Technical Domain Manager, ICT

2. • 2007 project last major review of site – little change
since then to core templates
• Cross-College project launched in 2012 to review and
redesign site
• Scope grew and changed until site finally launched in
December 2014
• Partnered with Domain7 and TERMINALFOUR
2012-14 website redesign project

3. Scale of Imperial web content
College CMS:
• 441 current live ‘page groups’
• 42,647 ‘live’ pages
• Most content in professional services
• Majority of sites research groups in
Natural Sciences and Engineering
• Many pages will be redundant
Medicine CMS:
• 12,000 pages, 12 main folders
• Currently 1,100 editors across both
systems
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Sites
Sites

4. Our web support structure
Communications and
Public Affairs
- Designer/Developers
- Web Training and
Support
- Content strategy
ICT
- Developers
- Editor help desk
Faculty Web Officers
College-wide web editor community

5. Project objectives
1. Make the site compatible with mobile devices
2. Refresh the design
3. Renew our audience research
4. Organise content in a better, user-focused way
5. Change content management technology
6. Meet level AA accessibility

6. Guiding concepts
1. Allow flexibility: Smooth internal
systems, optimized for the current
culture
Choices of templates and tools
Guidelines and best practice advice
2. Utility everywhere: Give your
audiences efficient search and
shortcuts
Improve navigation
User centric architecture
De-clutter site
3. Invite outsiders in: Appeal to both
emotion and logic in external decision-
making, by providing with evocative
inspiration and top actions
Improve content, reflect brand
Redesigned and modern templates
Improved navigation
User centric architecture
4. Promote who we are: Publish timely
research, education and translation
breakthroughs constantly
News across site
CMS capabilities to share content
Remember – every page is a homepage

7. Creating flexibility within a brand
and best practice framework

8. Templates and content types
• Three landing page templates
• One content page template
• Navigation resets throughout IA to enable
departments to create homepages with local nav

9. Offering choice
• Add content types to that framework
• Over 50 content types created,
including tabs, accordions, videos, call-
to-action buttons, columns, news and
events feeds and social media feeds
• Plus – a general content area
• Eight colour themes offered to all
editors

10. Variety within the templates

11. Limiting choice!
• Developed and integrated image crop tool as a new Input Type
• Sensitive to content area activated from and only offers relevant size(s)
• Create 3 different resolutions for different media types

12. Limiting choice!
• Context aware editor (TinyMCE)
• Only offer input options that are relevant to content type being added
e.g: General content editor

13. Limiting choice!
Carousel

14. Limiting choice!
3 Column general content block

15. Further Input Types being integrated
People and Research groups
• Back-end standalone Java applications
• PHP front-ends to work in T4
• Input types for seamless integration

16. Handling 1,000+ editors

17. Editor groupings
• Adding editors to roles in AD, managed by
Faculty Web officers
• Imported to T4 SM hourly
• Editor groups are created and added to branches
in T4 centrally.
• Groups are populated by Faculty Web officers

18. Access control
• Based on T4 code
• Active Directory based authentication
• Recursive group search
• Authentication code added to login page for security (removed from
‘Code Before Section’)
• AD Naming convention agreed for ease of management

19. Document access control
• Works in conjunction with hierarchy access control
• Secure documents in ‘internal’ category
• ‘Internal’ folder can be created anywhere
• Access denied to ‘internal’ documents by default
• No secure URL list or full site publish involved
Media Library SM Hierarchy

20. Migrating 60,000 pages

21. Our approach
• No automatic migration for any sites
• Launched in December 2014 with top level of site and sample set of
departmental and group sites
• Planned to migrate all pages into TERMINALFOUR within 12 months of
launching the site
• Timetabled large sites (over 100 pages) to spread load on training and
support during year
• Timed slots for strategically important or time specific (e.g. Festival,
Graduation, New Students etc)
• Encouraged smaller site owners to sign up for training when they felt
ready throughout the year
• Part time temp for year, and additional temp for last three months to
support “long tail” of sites

22. The process
1. Content type training and overview of designs first
2. Site map planning and review
3. Half day in-house TERMINALFOUR training or 1-2-1 introduction
4. New site created in hidden “under construction” area
5. Central auditing and review of site pre go-live
6. Friday release cycle accompanied by redirect creation

23. What’s next?

24. The end of the project
• Complete the migration
• Currently migrated 36% of sites in Oracle, representing 60% of total pages.
• A further 32% of pages are in the process of migrating
• Continue to develop and improve content types to offer more choice
and flexibility for our editors
• Focus on events calendar and forms
• Review and evaluate project – continual improvement rather than
future redesign

25. Thank you
Any questions?