CU Theme Update

As you know, we’ve been working on developing a new theme for our 550 websites.  If this is news to you, I encourage you to read  A New theme for Carleton Websites is Coming well as our last CU Theme Progress Report.

As announced at our last Coffee Break, we are aiming to begin roll outs in January and we are on target for this timeline.  Between now and then we still have some work to do. Also mentioned at the event, we are taking our time with this theme as we want it done right.

cuTheme Goals

Our goals for this project are to deliver a great theme that is scalable, accessible, flexible, secure, user friendly, and supported.  Here’s what we mean by that:

Scalable

• This speaks to new processes we’ve implemented to ensure that we are using our resources appropriately
• New development process
• New feature development requirements
• More room for more features

Accessible

• We planned this theme with accessibility first
• Undergoing a lot of testing to ensure our template meets WCAG 2.0 AA requirements
• We’re using an accessibility scanning tool called Tenon
• As part of the migration process, we will scan each site with Tenon and work with content editors to fix any content accessibility errors before it goes live
• New accessibility training and workshops coming!

Flexible

• Website editors will have a lot more control of how their content displays
• Homepage layouts – drag and drop
• More options for content displays
• Option to use top or side nav
• New jump to menu
• Rolling out a new drag and drop newsletter – this will not be included in the initial rollout

Secure

• We did a plugin review and we only use plugins from trusted sources, many we do in house
• Running the latest PHP and run wordpress updates often
• Duo two-factor authentication has been enabled

User Friendly

• Introducing Gutenberg
• Drag and drop content editor
• Re-usable blocks
• MK recently attended a conference and heard from three other schools who migrated to Gutenberg. They shared their lessons learned – we will be using this feedback to help make the new interface as intuitive as possible

Supported

• Group and individual training will be provide
• New documentation
• New style guide
• New workshops

cuTheme Progress

Here’s a quick overview of where we are at with the project.

This is what we have done:

• Backend architecture review complete
• New server set up ready to go
• Raven Design System (RDS) tested and accessibility concerns addressed (this took longer than anticipated, but we are very happy with where we are now) – this is what essentially controls the entire look and feel of the theme
• Custom Post Types complete (posts, events, people, video, files, etc) and tested
• New listing tool which will be used to push and pull content (needs testing with real data)
• New photo options (includes banner and thumbnail images)
• Site content reviews with Grad Studies, Neuroscience, and Sprott

And this is what we are working on:

• Final development on blocks
• QA on new blocks (gallery, timeline, image blocks)
• Editor UI for workflows for applicable blocks
• Testing
• Migration plan
• Documentation plan (including new video tutorials)
• Training plan
• Site content review with SSAC

And then there’s the actual migration…but we’ll talk more about that in a future post.

Luckily we have two co-ops joining us in January to help with documentation, training, and site migrations.

If you have any questions or concerns about, please don’t hesitate to contact me!