The University website is a collection of more than 300 individual websites with more than 25,000 pages of content. These sites play a significant role in the business of the University. They are used for recruitment of students, dissemination of information to the university community and public, and supports research and academic activities.
To support these activities, I.T. Services maintains a content management system (CMS) powered by Drupal. A CMS is a computer application that allows publishing, editing, modifying, organizing, deleting, and maintaining content from a central interface. Assistance is provided to individual departments and groups to maintain and update Drupal based sites.
University of Windsor website is currently powered by two systems: Drupal (current) and Lotus Domino (legacy). Majority of sites and pages have already been migrated to Drupal, but there are still some sites that use the legacy Lotus Notes web template that will be migrated at a later date.
Who provides this service?
The University website is a collaborative effort by:
- Content Editors
Who provide, edit and upload content for department web sites
- Web Services Group (WSG)
Who provides technical support, programming of the Drupal interface, application development and custom coding
- Public Affairs and Communications (PAC)
Who provides site branding and template design, site access and review, site strategy and architecture advice, graphic design services and communications support
Benefits of Drupal
- Template-based:
A consistent look and feel can be maintained between faculties and departments.
- Web-based:
No special software is needed to edit web pages.
- Collaborative:
Multiple editors can access different sections of the same web site simultaneously.
- Style and Content:
Content experts are able to make changes without having to learn advanced web editing.
- Minimal Experience:
Editors with minimal web experience can leverage Drupal's themes and produce quality web sites.
I.T. Services offers support for two web development environments 1); Drupal 2) and traditional html 3). It is our policy however, to produce all departmental Web sites using Drupal, an open source content management system (CMS). Individuals who wish to have a Web presence, are free to use either Drupal, html or a combination of both.
Our old web publishing and content management environment that was powered by Lotus Notes and Domino is no longer available. All remaining Notes-based sites and applications are being migrated to Drupal and HTML based sites.
Site maintenance includes services such as hosting Web sites, access control changes, html sites/directory, repairs to broken links, and other Web related services as agreed upon with the client.
Notes:
- PAC and I.T. Services no longer offers web publishing services on the Lotus Notes based system, although the existing Notes-based applications are still being supported. We will no longer create Lotus Notes based sites.
- Although technical support is still available for Drupal 6, PAC no longer provides training for this older version of Drupal.
- We will create html based resources. We will NOT provide support for html developers.
Requesting Assistance
Have a question about this service? Ask it here.
To request assistance with this service or to report an issue, please click on the Open Ticket button on the right. This will bring up a form that you will need to fill-out and submit to open a support ticket with the I.T. Service Desk. You will receive a confirmation e-mail with the ticket reference number and additional instructions.