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Roxen to Drupal Migration Project: What you need to know to make the
most of the migration
Jill Moraca Web Development Services
Office of Information Technology
Agenda 1. Overview of the Roxen to Drupal Migration Project
2. Planning - Decisions to make before building a website
3. Content Strategy - What to do with all your text, images, and files
4. Writing for the Web - How to improve it
5. University Requirements, Recommendations, and Best Practices - the Do's and Dont’s
6. Maintenance - The website is done, now what?
Don’t just move it, improve it!
Overview
• September 2019 = shutdown of Roxen CMS
• All sites must be moved off the CMS
• Help is available
Why shutdown Roxen?
• Roxen CMS is not keeping pace with University needs
• Adding new functionality is difficult
• Support for the CMS is hard to find
Help
• Funding is available to offset the cost (Thank you SAGIT Committee!)
• Web Development Services staff
• Training classes
Funding
To qualify you must:
• Move your website before September 2019
• Move your website to one of the OIT-Managed Systems:
• Template Website System
• Custom Website System
• OpenScholar
Funding categories
• Small Sites… – Up to 8 hours of work covered by fund – Typically move into Template System – Can do-it-yourself
• Medium Sites… – Up to 40 hours of work covered by fund – Typically move into the Template System with some
additional work
• Large Sites… – Up to 100 hours of work covered by the fund – Sometimes move into the Custom System, usually with
additional work
Process
Option 1: DIY 1. Request a Template Site 2. Take the training classes
and/or read the online documentation
3. Get started building at your convenience (before September 2019!)
Option 2: With WDS 1. Fill out the migration
survey 2. WDS will access your
website 3. WDS will provide a
timeline and cost estimate, if any additional costs are expected
4. WDS will work with you to migrate the website
Additional Benefits
• Mobile-friendly website
• Opportunity to clean up outdated content
• Opportunity to implement a site accessible to those with disabilities
• Opportunity to improve your existing website
Don’t just move it, improve it!
Planning
Planning
Before After
Elements of Success
1. Single point of contact 2. Clear goals 3. Time
Single Point of Contact
Goals
• Set clear goals
• Your goals
• Users goals
How will you know that your website is a success?
How will you measure that success?
Time
• Set aside enough time
• Don’t underestimate the content
• Hit your own deadlines
Recap - Elements of Success
1. Single point of contact 2. Clear goals 3. Time
Don’t take my word for it.
Let’s hear from Carla…
The question: Who is doing what in the History department?
The primary audience: prospective graduate students and scholars around the world.
Fall 2014 January-March
2015
April 2015 May 2015 June 2015 July 2015
in-house inventory (me)
(over 500 pages)/
studying other sites (me)
content strategy /
interviews/site
structure –
Jenn Hall starts
(285 hrs)
content clean up
and archiving (GD)
Kelly & Leyshonte
443hrs+ 75hrs
content migration:
Jenn, Kelly & Leyshonte
– Taxonomies: me, Kelly
Content views, etc.
WDS – development/design starts
November 17
2015-Launch
691 hrs.
formal budget
proposal/approval
dept preps and
check ins with Jill
started in-house budget discussions
Chair
Dept Mgr
Content
help
Fa
cu
lty
Sta
ff Ed
itors
ME or ?
• Content hours (including me): over 1000
• In-house project management hours (me): over 1000
• WDS hours: 691
Discussion
Divide into groups of 4-5 people.
Does anyone have an experience they can share where a project went off the rails
because of time?
What happened?
How did you manage it?
Content Strategy
A website without content is…
Website Content - Considerations
1. What do you need to communicate?
2. What other medium are you using to communicate that message?
3. How does the website fit into that?
4. How will you market the website?
Website Content – To Do
1. Inventory existing content
2. Assign ownership
3. Get rid of ROT
4. Reorganize / rewrite content to align with goals
5. Improve the writing
#1 Content Inventory
• Read through every page of your website
• Click on every link
• Create a spreadsheet of the pages
You’ll be surprised at what you find
#2 Assign Ownership
• Who owns the content?
• Who is the subject matter expert?
• Who approves the content before its added to the website?
• Who adds the content to the website?
• How often is it updated / reviewed?
• Do you have a content review schedule?
#3 Get rid of ROT
• ROT = Redundant, Outdated, and Trivial
• Most cases, your website is not an archive
Content – After the inventory
• Are you missing any content that you want users to see?
• Are you missing any content that your users want to see?
• Is your content easy to find?
• Is your content organized in a way that makes sense to your users?
#4 Organize Content
Tips: Information Architecture & Navigation
• Make it intuitive. Avoid “cute” and “fancy”
• Make it visible. Avoid putting key info in a pop up
• Provide context
Remember: Don’t Make Me Think!
Organize Content - Methods
• Post-its
• Index cards
• Online tools
Recap - Website Content
1. Inventory existing content
2. Assign ownership
3. Get rid of ROT
4. Reorganize / rewrite content to align with goals
5. Improve the writing (next topic…)
Writing for the Web
How do people read a website? The Answer is…
“They don’t”
Source: Jakob Nielsen, How Users Read on the Web, October 1997, www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html
Writing for the Web
•What the research says
• Migrating your content
• Your content has been migrated, now what?
What the Research Says
• People scan websites
• Good sites place content where people expect it
• People are more than happy to scroll if they think they’ll be rewarded (information scent)
College Students in Particular
• Use similar techniques used in speed reading when reading online
• Scan pages for keywords and ignore non-critical elements
• Criticize sites that sound too formal, juvenile, or disingenuous
Source: College Students on the Web, Neilsen Norman Group.
How do prospective students use online resources to research universities?
Graphic adapted from Students Online trends report, 2014 in collaboration with www.topuniversities.com
Graphic adapted from Students Online trends report, 2014 in collaboration with www.topuniversities.com
Writing tips….
• People are BUSY
•Nuts & bolts, not poetry
•Scannable!
•Write like a journalist, not an academic
How do journalists write?
• Strong ledes
• Inverted Pyramid
• Simple sentences
• Action verbs
• 8th grade reading level
Give the eye a break
Make text glance-able by breaking up the text with standard design elements including:
• Bullets
• Subheadings
• Hypertexts
• Frequent use of graphic elements
Headings
Use headings to:
• Improve scanning
• Improve search
engine
optimization
• Make your website
accessible
Migrating the content
• Method 1 – copy and paste
• Method 2 – WDS automates some content migration
Most likely you will be working with a combination of both.
Be prepared for some manual cleanup and improvements…
Manual cleanup & improvements
• Check formatting
• Remove extra line breaks
• Check links
• Remove important text content from images
• Make headings
Content Cleanup - Use Headings
Use headings to:
• Improve scanning
• Improve search
engine
optimization
• Make your website
accessible
Requirements & Recommendations
Requirements
• University IT Policy
– Copyrighted material
– Hosting – outside hosting – get approval from OGC.
– Managing Data
http://www.princeton.edu/itpolicy/
Website Requirements
• Office of Communications
– Proper use of University logo and word mark
– Required Elements
– Princeton Editorial Style Guide
http://www.princeton.edu/communications/services/
Accessibility
This is a huge topic! What you must know:
• Use 2 to 3 words to create meaningful links
• Do not put important content into a format that cannot be ready be a screen reader.
• Add alternative text to images.
• Use heading tags
http://webaim.org/standards/wcag/checklist
Maintenance
The website migration is done, now what?
•Create a schedule and periodically review the content
• Check links
• OIT takes care of the system so you don’t have to worry! (security, backups, performance, code updates, etc.)
Last, but not least!
•Put a proper redirect in place
Email [email protected]
If you add your own redirect into Roxen, it will be deleted when the system shuts down!
Questions?
For more information:
drupal.princeton.edu/roxen-migration
___________________
Jill Moraca
Manager, Web Development Services
8-6907
