November 2022 Website Meeting

Notes

10-year anniversary review

With the 10-year anniversary celebration and its corresponding page on the website being a primary focus over the last month or so, we began our meeting with a look at how that project went and what we could learn from it. Nikky shared that overall she was pleased with how the page turned out. We discussed ways that the page can continue to live on now that the week of celebrations has passed.

One issue that did come up when populating the page with content dealt with news stories that needed to appear on the timeline: if a story page was not from one of the Health Sciences websites, but instead came from a source like WVU Today, the anniversary page would break. This was because the anniversary page needed information from the story’s URL to pull data about the story from our News system. When a story was referenced from other sites, that information wasn’t available systematically. Still, this will serve as something that the web team will keep in mind and learn from as we move forward and continue to build pages like this.

Nikky also took this opportunity to point out how difficult she finds the image cropping tool to be in the SOLE News system. This will hopefully be improved in the redesigned Newsroom project, as the methods for handling media like this will change.

We also touched on the hectic-ness that was a part of the process in getting this page put together. In general, it’s not uncommon for projects like these to get disjointed, as expectations aren’t properly defined or met by all parties involved. It’s something that can always be improved by all of those involved in such a project.

Analytics report

Bill once again shared with the group his Google Analytics report for the month of October.

One of the things that immediately stood out on this month’s report was how the top result in page ranking was the mask Q&A story that was published in late January of this year. We all speculated as to the cause of this: maybe someone outside the school has been linking out to the story as a resource. Nikky also brought up how this should have referenced the campus mask observation study results that had previously been published on the site.

Update on various projects

Shawn then gave us a brief update on the status of some of the projects the web team continues to work on. The new Events module is continuing to expand, and work is moving on the Newsroom project. The team has also been setting up websites for clinics that aren’t managed by WVU Medicine.

Sometime in 2023, work will begin on a process to consolidate our Umbraco servers. Right now, there are at least seven different servers that house the campus’s websites. The goal is to merge all of those servers into one. This won’t ultimately affect the editing experience Nikky, Kayla, and anyone else tasked with maintaining sites. It’ll just help make managing the servers Umbraco runs on more efficient.

Commencement

This year, we are going to be refreshing the Health Sciences Commencement website with details about the December ceremony. The Health Sciences schools’ ceremony will take place on December 17. Some of the base details about commencement have already been updated on the site, and Jason will continue to work on this as information becomes available. This update will also require adding profiles for December grads to the site.

Nikky mentioned this will be very beneficial for Kayla—she joined the School of Public Health just after the May commencement–as it will give her the chance to learn the process around commencement information and the website.

As for a timeline for having profiles ready for that site, Shawn says that the week before Thanksgiving would be ideal. It also seems like the goal is to have about 2–3 profiles from each school on the site. For those, the school merely needs to add the profiles to their own website, or update existing profiles to include questions or information about graduating from the school. Then, the Commencement website can be set up to pull those profiles in straight from the school sites.

Nikky wondered if there was any other content that would be their responsibility for this site, but there really isn’t much beyond the profiles. There’s, of course, the general event information, the majority of which has already been provided. Shawn did ask if Nikky knew if Dean Coben would be writing a message or letter to graduates, as seems to be the tradition. Coincidentally, Nikky had just submitted his letter to be included in the commencement program, so she will forward it to the web team for inclusion on the site.

Special topics course

Finally, Nikky wanted to discuss with us a unique, one-off course that Erik Carlton, the school’s senior associate dean, will be leading. She wasn’t sure how to go about getting information about this hybrid course on the website, since we don’t typically handle information about individual courses like this. The course, Foundations in Healthcare Leadership, is seen as a stepping stone to the MHA program and is tied to their HPML department. One of their target audiences for this course is WVU Medicine employees, but it could also be marketed toward the school’s residents.

In discussing adding this course’s information to the site, Nikky was attempting to temper expectations until she had an opportunity to present it to the web team. There was talk of having a quick turnaround time on getting this information posted, but Nikky was not sure what that meant exactly, and she is currently waiting on clarification around the details for this course, which has up until recently been in flux.

In brainstorming about this, Shawn mentioned the Continuing Education website as an example of what could be done. Thinking about where this information might live on the Public Health website, we were certainly thinking it could live in the Students section, with either a site announcement-style component on the Students page or possibly including a button to the information in the “Explore Our Resources” section of that page.

As for the type of content contained on the page outside of the general details, we could expect to include guest speaker details, a topics list, and any available lecture recordings.

Shawn seemed to think that this could be built in about 4–5 days. Nikky will look to follow-up next week, possibly as early as Monday.