Category Archives: What we do

Team Update: 15 – 26 August

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It’s been a busy couple of weeks here in Corporate Web Development as we get ready to launch our next batch of sites in Go Mobile.

Go Mobile programme

Fen has been working with Lisa on the History, Classics and Archaeology site. She’s also been putting the finishing touches to the Web Info and Feedback site, ready for go live next Friday.

Lisa has been working with Fen to restructure and edit the History, Classics and Archaeology website ready for go live next week. She has also designed a feedback form to collate amends from editors after completing their site accuracy check before the proofing stage.

Linda has been editing the Working with Business website ready for go live next week.

Andrew has worked on the post-migration and editing of the Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies site in T4.

Emily has been putting the finishing touches to the Singapore site, before it gets passed on for proofing. She’s also written some blog posts highlighting examples of good content use in some of our recent batches.

In preparation for batches 5 and 6, Fen has audited the Computing Science website and created a new sitemap, Emily has audited the School of Modern Languages website, and Andrew has audited the School of Dental Sciences website.

Lisa has been looking at the review process for sites that have already gone through Go Mobile.

Design and Technical developments

Our new directions content type, 14. Google directions, is now available to T4 web editors. Check out the upcoming blog post (30 August) and our demo site for more details.

Campaigns and other developments

Linda ran a workshop on a possible new sports website.

The whole team have been supporting updates/technical queries around the Clearing campaign.

Training and support

Fen delivered a Media Management workshop this week. Anne delivered a T4 CMS workshop last week.

We’ve received 35 support requests through the NU Service Helpdesk and have resolved 23 of them.

Plans for the next few weeks

Fen is meeting with the Mobility team next week to discuss content for the new Loyola pages on their website.

Anne’s preparing T4 CMS training for editors based in Singapore.

We’re getting things lined up for Batch 5 and 6 which will see us over half way through the Go Mobile Programme!

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Team update: 1 – 12 August 2016

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Go Mobile programme

We’re well under way with work on sites in Batch 4 of Go Mobile.

Andrew has worked on the pre-migration tagging of the Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies website. He will begin post-migration and editing in T4 next.

Linda has been checking the pre-migration content for the Working with Business website ready for its migration into T4 next week.

Steve and Emily have been preparing the Singapore site for migration.

Emma C has edited content for the new Spatial Analytics and Modelling site.

Fen has been working with Catherine to develop the social media directory on the Website Information and Feedback site.

Audits have begun on sites in batch 5, including:

  • Biomedical Sciences
  • Computing Science
  • Education, Communication and Languages
  • Global Urban Research Unit
  • History, Classics and Archaeology
  • University Events

Linda and Lisa met with editors in the School of History, Classics and Archaeology to discuss their migration into T4. On the cards, a new structure and colour scheme!

Design and technical developments

Catherine has been filling in for Peter while he is on holiday by doing the technical preparation and migration of Batch 4 sites.

Campaigns and other developments

Linda is working on a workshop to develop new content for a Sport website.

Steve has been planning web developments related to the Science and Engineering Excellence project.

Lisa has been restructuring and developing content on the Study website.

Fen has been developing new content for the Loyola Centre, which she will add to the Mobility website this autumn.

Catherine has been finalising the technical requirements for the Clearing campaign. She is also setting up a development website for a new library resource, the Academic Skills Kit.

Training and support

Linda and Fen delivered the Planning and Writing workshops last week and Linda delivered a Media Management session.

This week Emma C and Emily ran yet more Planning and Writing workshops. And Anne delivered a T4 Basics session.

We’ve received 52 support requests through the NU Service Helpdesk and have resolved 19 of them.

Plans for the next few weeks

Over the next couple of weeks we’ll be working on:

  • technical support for the Clearing campaign
  • batch 4 sites; migration into T4 and editing content
  • batch 5 sites; audits and scoping technical requirements
  • training development
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Team update: 18 July – 29 July 2016

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Go Mobile programme

Linda met with the School of History, Classics and Archaeology to line up their site for Batch 4. She’s also been working on the Business School website to make sure it’s ready to go.

This last week has been all about the proofreading and final amends to sites to get them ready for launch on 29 July (today).

Emily’s been working on the NICR and CEAM sites to get them ready to go live, and has also helped out with the proofing of the Business School site.

Emma C made the final amends to the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics website before passing it on to Andrew for proofing.

Andrew’s worked on editing sites for the Cardiovascular Research Centre and Institute of Cellular Medicine, before proofing English and helping proof the Business School site. He’s also completed the audit for CURDS in Batch 4.

Anne’s been proofing the Maths & Stats website ready for go live on 29 July.

Fen has been working on the School of Mathematics and Statistics website, and proofing the School of Chemistry website ready for go live today. She’s also been prepping for Batches 4 and 5, with audits of the Conference Team, Catering and Business Services websites.

Lisa has edited the School of Chemistry website, which has been proofed by Fen with help from Jane, who has pitched in with proofing for a number of sites. Jane also met with Accommodation to discuss further developments to their site, which launched in Batch 2.

There’s always ongoing planning for the next batches. Emma B and Linda have mapped out work in Batches 4 and 5.

Design and Technical developments

Catherine completed the colours and styles for websites in Batch 3 and has started some of Batch 4

Catherine has been building a T4 widget to provide Directions to our schools, faculties and services, with input from Jane and Andrew.

Peter has been conducting the technical preparation of websites in Batch 3, ready for Go Live on the 29 July (today).

Campaigns and other developments

Linda and Catherine met with the Advancement Team about design requirements for the new system they are implementing to manage the alumni community and events.

Peter dealt with a request from NU London to add campaign tracking from Rubicon.

Training and support

Fen and Linda delivered a full day training in Planning and Writing Web Content.

Andrew has delivered a half-day of media management training.

We’ve received 39 support requests through the NU Service Helpdesk and have resolved 22 of them.

Plans for the next few weeks

Starting Batch 4: audits, kick-off meetings and planning.

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Team update: 4 July – 15 July 2016

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Go Mobile programme

Batches 3 and 4

The team is well into Batch 3 of the Go Mobile programme. We’re planning for the go live of sites on 29 July!

Fen has been busy working on the School of Mathematics and Statistics website. It is now in T4 and is being edited.

Andrew has been building a new site in T4 to showcase the work of our CardioVascular Research Centre.

He’s also been redeveloping the Institute of Cellular Medicine’s website. The focus is on restructuring their research pages.

Emily is working with the Northern Institute for Cancer Research to get their content ready.  She is also working on the School of Chemical Engineering and Advanced Materials website. They are currently in the pre-migration template – ready to move into T4 next week.

Emma has been working with the Business School to get their site on track to go live in this batch.

Lisa has the Chemistry site audited and in its pre-migration phase.

We’re already planning for batch 4 too.  It never stops!

Site reviews

We’re planning to return to sites that have been through the Go Mobile programme. We’re aiming to review around six months after launch. We’ll be looking at:

  • site performance
  • broken links and spelling errors
  • last updates
  • whether it meets content standards

Fen has started a review of the Research website. Andrew has also reviewed the Institute for Sustainability’s website. We’ll be reporting back in due course on further site reviews.

Design and Technical developments

The tech team are working on requirements for Batch 3 and 4 sites.

There’s been a lot of work on the Clearing campaign particularly around analytics.  This has been keeping them out of mischief!

Training and support

We ran a successful web community event on Monday, which got together around 10 web editors – new and old!

We covered:

  • where we’re at with Go Mobile
  • a show and tell (new features in T4)
  • a World Café – an open forum for feedback on T4

We’ll be writing a further blog post on this soon.

Anne delivered T4 CMS Basics training. Jane and Fen delivered our Planning and Writing Web Content workshop.

We’ve received 43 support requests through the NU Service Helpdesk and have resolved 18 of them.

Plans for the next few weeks

Our focus for the next few weeks is finishing off Batch 3 and preparing for Batch 4!

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Team Update: 20 June – 1 July 2016

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Go Mobile programme

We finished working on sites in batch two, with five sites going live on 24 June:

Lisa proofread the Faculty of Medical Sciences website. She also met with the editor for the new Medical Sciences Online Learning site. The editor is delighted with the site and is already planning ways to evaluate and develop the content.

Fen proofread the Medical Sciences Online Learning website. This week, she has been helping the editors in the Faculty of Medical Sciences to make some updates to their content.

Emily and Steve have been working on the School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences website, ready for go live today.

Jane and Emily have been putting the finishing touches to the Accommodation website. All members of the content team have chipped in to proof the site ready for go live today.

Fen and Linda have been working with the UG marketing team to develop new websites for Clearing and Clearing at Newcastle University London. Both sites will go live today.

Emma C has been working on the Business School website in T4, getting it ready to hand back to the NUBS marketing team for final accuracy checks.

Andrew has been working with the Institute of Cellular Medicine and the CardioVascular Research Centre on the initial stages of their website developments.

We’re continually reviewing our processes so we can be flexible and effective throughout the entire Go Mobile project. We held a ‘Sprint retrospective’ meeting on Wednesday to assess how things went in batch two, and identify where improvements can be made for future batches.

Design and technical developments

Catherine and Peter have been working on the design for some banners for our UG degree pages. The banners will link to the new Clearing website and will show which courses are available when Clearing opens in August. Catherine has also been preparing the colour schemes for the batch three sites.

Campaigns and other developments

Catherine is building a new research section for the Newcastle Academic Health Partners website.

Peter has been updating the goals in Google Analytics and adding additional button tracking for the Clearing campaign.

Emma C has worked with members of the Press Office and International Relations team to get statements from the University about the outcome of the EU Referendum onto the website.

Linda wrote a blog post about using Clarity Grader to improve the readability of a website.

Training and support

Four of the team attended a two-day Google Analytics training session to make sure we have everything set up correctly and are getting the most from our data.

Anne delivered T4 CMS Basics training.

Andrew delivered Media Management training.

Fen and Jane are preparing to deliver Planning and Writing Web Content training next week.

The whole team has been involved in planning our upcoming Web Editors Community event, taking place on Monday 11 July.

We’ve received 34 support requests through the NU Service Helpdesk and have resolved 18 of them.

Plans for the next few weeks

We’re beginning work on sites in batch three. Audits are in progress and site structures are being agreed. Next up is pre-migration work to get the sites ready to import into T4.

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