Proposed changes to web.unc.edu

• ITS-Digital Services wants your feedback!  
• We are moving hosted WordPress websites to the cloud, and we’re proposing changes to web.unc.edu. Come hear our proposal to address and improve digital accessibility and university branding.
• If you have a site hosted on web.unc.edu you’ll want to weigh in on these ideas!

Date: RESCHEDULED   Thursday, Feb 13th
Time: RESCHEDULED – 2:30-3:30
Location:  Graduate Student Center
Presenter: Kim Vassiliadis, ITS-Digital Services

Presentation Slides

Proposed Changes to web.unc.edu presentation slides (pdf)

Presentation Recap and Notes

• Moving to the cloud
  • Contact signed with Pantheon
  • ITS is paying for the hosting
  • Primary focus is environments ITS manages
    • Web Dot network
      • Self service
      • WP Multi-site
    • Sites Dot network
      • Enterprise
      • Departmental
      • WP hosting
    • unc.edu
      • Stand alone installation
• Opportunities
  • Rethink offerings
  • Address university branding
  • Address digital accessibility
  • Educate users: website ownership
• Current Multi-site
  • Currently ~5K sites
  • 9 Themes
  • 50+ Plugins shared
• Recent sites created
  • Sites created since September
  • ~700 sites
  • Numbers
    • 83% were created by student
      • Most were for classes
      • Some for Resume
      • Few for other reasons
    • 17% were created by employees
• WebDotUNC
  • By default setup as a web.unc.edu domain with your site name
  • Example site – Vaccines
    • Concerns
      • Copyrighted material
      • Accessible
      • Information Literacy
      • Has a .unc.edu domain
• Employee Sites
  • Roughly evenly split between the different use reasons
    • Lab Sites
    • Associations
    • Professional Faculty Sites
    • Personal Faculty Sites
• Proposal
  • Rename the network from web.unc.edu to some name that does not imply the authority of the university
  • Has some affiliation, but not an official page/site
  • Could be either a subdomain or a slash URL name
    • Ex: sitename.tarheel.live vs. tarheel.live/sitename
  • Criteria for a unc.edu domain
    • Site Must
      • Represent the university
      • Meet baseline accessibility requirements
        • Attend an accessibility training within a semester/year
      • The site must qualify and the site/content managers require training for this level
• Kim’s questions
  • Is tarheel.live effective?
  • Do we grandfather in existing 5K sites?
    • On request?
  • How should we handle faculty/personal sites going forward?
  • Other suggestions?
• Ownership transfer
  • Could have a process to change ownership of a site (ex: student site a professor wants to keep)
  • This way content can persist beyond
• New workflow
  • All sites would start at the tarheel.live
  • There would be a request process to move to a unc.edu domain
• Should we have this [website hosting] service at all?
  • There are free services available
  • But, this service is 10 years old and we are reticent to discontinue it at this point
• How to manage older sites?
  • Have decommissioned
• If you are a lab, and you are spinning it up, how to have banner removed?
  • Could be a request process?
  • Could be moving the site to unc.edu instead
• Archive
  • We don’t want to become an archive for old sites
  • Can work with university archive services to capture the content but retire the site.
• SiteImprove Tool
  • Researched accessibility tools, received help from people to test
  • Just decided on SiteImprove recently and working with different groups to provide access
  • Want to make it so webmasters can scan the various site they manage
  • Pilot members
  • Will it cover login sites?
    • Working on that now
    • Can scan the content

Questions and Discussion

• How much will visual branding be required for the initial move?
  • That conversation will come in a later phase
• Suggestion to use the subdomain path
  • There are challenges to both approaches
• Distinction between official sites and personal/student sites, this is WordPress and this is free for many, what about putting a banner denoting it is not an official site?
  • Not sure if it will help us legally, but there is a perception that it would divorce us from the direct connection
• Have you discussed building a form for sign up that qualifies people as they fill it out?
  • Yes, but we want to see on the back-end that you are doing your due diligence before getting a unc.edu site
• Advantage to separate URL?
  • Can have the default domain go to an explanation page
• How to handle domain mapped URLs?
  • May leave as is for now and circle back when we have the initial phase complete
• Thinking about GDPR in this process?
  • Not been given any guidance so far
• How will the current URLs redirect?
  • That plan is in the works but not finalized at this point
• What is the cost of the subdomain vs. subdirectory?
  • One cost for a subdirectory but each subdomain could have a cost associated with them
• Theming thoughts? Will we get away from the bootstrap shortcuts?
  • Yes
  • They are in discussions about shared elements
  • Look at the oxygen builder that can take the place of a theme
    • Super fast
    • Can create design without themes
• Could you have a structure where you ask for the life-time of the site?
  • That way you can put a timeline on the site
  • The person would need to think about how long the site would need to stay on the web.
• If I am a professor, what are my options? Does the site need to be indexed and searchable to everyone in the world?
  • Could there be checkboxes for various options? Google Indexing for example?
  • Could setup the Tarheel.live sites so they don’t index by default and have some process for becoming indexed
  • Kim looked at other University offerings and few institutions provide the infrastructure that UNC does
    • Many have some space for personal
• Is it possible to have a branch that the class sites go to that can be temporary and expire and those who want a longer lifetime could take a different path?
  • Could use a directory value (LDAP values) to identify users
• Could there be an automated way to decommission unless people want to keep it?
  • Essentially, you get a site for a year
  • At the 11 month mark (or some other time), send an email reminding them to request another year.
  • For high-level users, they could be higher on the radar for the digital services group
• Require second admin
  • Could require someone as a second admin if the site is important
  • Might be some cases where people leave and the site needs to persist
• For the official work sites, will it be the same functionality as current (plugin restrictions, themes, etc.)?
  • Shifting what we have for now
  • Want to examine this at a later date
• CloudApps has similar issues? How to handle?
  • Have not started that conversation yet, but a good idea
  • Inactive sites spin down over time, so may not be a pressing issues
• Are absolved from the accessibility rules with the tarheel.live?
  • No but it does make a difference
  • We need to do what we can, where we can
  • Baby steps to make things better
• What if the URL was students.unc.edu?
  • Just because you are using tarheel.live, it is still UNC related
  • Investigated using sandbox accounts in the platform
    • Tested it with students in a class to see the feasibility
    • It was a disaster, difficult to use,
    • If the site became a “successful” site, there would be a payment structure required
• Cost?
  • There is no cost at this time
  • Will be covered by ITS
• What could this move provide for us?
  • Free up time on the Digital Services team
  • A more robust and effective method for rolling out plugins
• Will ITS allow sliders on sites?
  • Starting to phase out sliders.
  • Old sites are grandfathered in but new sites will not allow it
  • But they are not accessible, can trap keyboard users
  • Design is moving away from this now (make the logo big and make the logo bigger!)
• Referring to old assignments
  • Faculty like to link to previous assignments and work
  • How to handle this persistence?
  • Need to consider if the student