CU Theme Progress Report

As many of you have heard, we are working on developing a new theme for our WordPress websites.

About the New Theme

Right now we manage, basically, two themes: CMS (powering roughly 500 websites) and Framework (powering about 40 sites). When we talk about the new theme (we’re calling it CU Theme) what we’re really talking about is combining CMS and Framework into one super flexible, super scalable, theme.

If you manage a CMS website (like Economics or History) you will have the option to take advantage of some new content blocks that previously only existed in Framework.

If you manage a Framework website (like Science or FASS), you will benefit from on-going, cutting-edge development.  Previously much of our time was put into new features for CMS (500 sites vs 40 sites) but with one theme, we will no longer be splitting development between competing priorities.

The biggest change of all – to you as a content editor – will be the introduction to the new WordPress editor (WP calls it Gutenberg).  It is a drag-and-drop block based editor, and what I like best is that it displays the content as it will appear while you build your page.  So no more previewing pages to see how they will look to your visitor.

And as with any new theme, you will notice some updates to the look and feel.  Sites will be consistent with the new carleton.ca homepage.

Our Approach

Essentially this is our approach to developing and rolling out the new CU Theme:

1. Architecture review. 
   
   At this stage we reviewed all the components (plugins, functions, blocks, etc.) of our themes and templates. 
2. Research.
   
   We set aside the components that needed investigation –  we discussed whether something was needed, if it could be done better, and new features that needed to be implemented.
3. Client engagements.
   
   We started a Web Advisory Group to help inform some of the decisions we needed to make.  (Want to be involved? Let me know!)
4. Design and document.
   
   We have been refining our design system which guides the overall look and feel of all the blocks.
5. Develop and document.
   
   This is where we’re at right now. We have hit some snags as we are developing in the new WordPress environment, but no show stoppers.
6. Training and documentation.
   
   We are developing both a style guide to help you use the blocks in the best way possible and a lot of new training material.
7. Pilot and testing.
   
   We have sites lined up to be pilots and will be testing the new theme rigorously during this period.  Included is testing on all modern browsers and on various mobile devices – and of course general usability and accessibility. 
8. More training.
   
   We will be providing many in person workshops and training seminars to go along with our online documentation.
9. Migrations.
   
   We, unfortunately, will need to manually migrate Framework sites but luckily CMS sites will fit nicely into the new theme.
10. More training.
    
    Training will be ongoing as we migrate over to the new theme.

Questions? Concerns?

There is still so much to say in terms of design, development, rollout, and training – but I’ll leave it at that for now.  If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact me – I’ll do my best to address your questions in a future blog post and at our Coffee Break event later this month.