Training our Editors to Think Digital First

Our Go Mobile programme is the driver for some brand new training to get the University thinking digital first.

Raising the bar

We’re training our web editors to operate the new content management system – T4.

We’ve also invited key site owners to come and learn about managing a site. This includes setting goals for content and best practice in writing for the web.

The first sessions ran on 7 and 8 May for trainees from the:

  • Undergraduate and Postgraduate marketing teams
  • Research Office
  • Institute for Sustainability
  • School of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development

Day 1: Writing and Planning Web Content

We want to get our web editors really thinking about their content.

The University doesn’t want a team of content-putter-uppers. It needs digitally savvy writers who understand what their site is for and how to evaluate it.

Day 1 introduces setting a site purpose and how you prioritise content to support it. It was good to be able to try out some exercises we’d picked up at Confab Europe (a content strategy conference).  Even better, our editors seemed to really understand them and could see how they might use them.

“[The] site purpose planning doc was super helpful!”

The session also covers tips for writing web content and introduce a range of tools to help you do this.

“The writing tips I know, but still find hard to put into practice…it was a useful refresher.”

Day 2: T4 Training

Our T4 training day provides an introduction to the Content Management System. It showcases the idea of responsive design and how we’re configuring T4 to support editors to write for a range of devices.

“Having news and staff lists in one place is fantastic.”

Empowering editors

Site editors can more easily influence the design of their content in T4. The first editors are starting a 2-4 week period of supported editing. In this time they’ll get to apply new layouts, add quality assets, and improve their content for reading online.

It’s a chance to cut words, tighten copy and focus on users.

Initial feedback

As we go, we’re gathering feedback on the training topics, the delivery and the new CMS. We’re in Beta mode at the moment – but hope we’ve got a good starting point. We’ll be improving the training content as we go.

Accessing training

Training is only available to site editors as part of the Go Mobile Programme: we’ll be in touch when it’s your turn!

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Introduction to Tools

Our web editors currently use Contribute web publishing software and an in-house database (Site Manager) to publish content on over 20,000 external facing web pages. We provide training and support in the use of these tools. Find out about training on our website (University Login required).

In the coming months the Go Mobile programme will see us migrating to a new Content Management System. This will support our editors in the production of content that is mobile responsive.

Tools topics

We’ll give you tips to help you use Contribute and Site Manager and  introduce you to our new Content Management System.

We’ll also tell you about some useful tools you can use to:

  • find broken links and misspellings on your website
  • grade your content for readability on the web
  • see how your content looks on mobile and tablet

Suggest a topic

If there’s a topic you’d like us to cover – get in touch via the comments or via our website. – (University Login required).

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Introduction to Go Mobile

The Newcastle University website was designed to be viewed on standard desktop monitors. Yet in 2014 25% of global web traffic comes from mobile devices. Our website analytics show that visits to our site reflect this trend, with 28% of traffic coming from mobile devices.

The Go Mobile programme is an exciting mission to give our users what they need – high quality web content that is mobile responsive.

What we’re doing

We’re making a commitment to improve our web content.

We’re making our sites responsive. Users of tablets, mobiles and desktops see the same website optimised for viewing on their screen.

We’re improving our Content Management System. We have over 20,000 external facing web pages and the systems used to edit and publish them are out of date. We’re moving all our sites into the Terminal 4 Content Management System (T4).

People involved

The Corporate Web Development team are leading this project with the support of the IT Service.

Programme updates on our blog

We’ll be using this blog to provide updates. This could be anything from a key project milestone to a ‘show and tell’ type post on a new responsive feature or design component.

Expect to see blood, sweat, tears and plenty of photos of post it notes as we plan this huge programme of work.

Get in touch

If you have any questions about the project please contact us.

We’ll also be adding project updates to our website (University Login required).

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