Western Web Edit is a set of designs and functionality for creating departmental and college web sites using a content management product called Drupal.
The term “Web Edit” refers to the fact that users will edit pages for the web directly on the web, with no software product required except for a browser. This extends editing capability to anyone who can use a browser and has access to the internet: from the office, from home, or while traveling. The goal is to offer tools so that the university can begin to move web page content editing from web professionals to the content owners.
We are currently building the Western Web Edit system for Colleges and Departments. Simultaneously, the design team is meeting to define a template or family of templates for these new websites. The first three colleges will be CBE, Woodring, and CFPA, with other colleges starting during winter term 2013 or whenever they are ready to start working on the conversion.
Functionality to be provided by Western Web Edit includes:
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Smartphones, iPods and tablets are found on campus in larger numbers each term. It is essential that we support these tools with our new websites. The College and Department sites we are creating with Western Web Edit will be accessible by all these types of mobile devices.
Using a coding system called Responsive Web Design (RWD) we will make sure that the first day the sites go live they can be accessed by all devices including those with large or tiny screens, or those with keyboards/mice or touch controls. RWD allows the browser to determine the type of device that is being used and then display that site appropriate to the width of the screen and whether the input is by fingers (requiring a large target) or mouse (small target).
The capability of our users also varies, and we continue to be committed to producing sites that are accessible to all of our users. We are aided in this by the fact that accessibility is a goal of the Drupal developßers and so much of the functionality has already been made accessible. We are putting even more thought on this design into appropriate color contrast as well.
The 2012 design team was comprised of staff and students from University Communications, ATUS, CFPA, and Admissions. In December of 2012 a College Template was selected for use by the College Drupal sites.
Training started Spring 2012. We gave a couple of introductory Drupal Notes talks starting with the most general information and slowly moving to more detailed information. You can view the videos of the talks given so far at http://collaborate.wwu.edu/wwudug . We plan to resume these during the 2013 year. Currently we are working with the colleges that are in the process of converting their sites to the Western Web Edit System. ß
If you would like notification of future meetings, please contact the ATUS Help Desk, x3333 or helpdesk@wwu.edu, to be added to the mail list grp.drupalusersgroup.
We have started on the process to provide new College and Department sites that are attractive, modern, interactive, and representing the best in accessibility for all of our users and their devices.
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2013 Western Washington University : page updated
12.10.2012
