Web Roadmap

These are our plans for changes to our services in the near and long term. This is not an exclusive list and we encourage you to read through our Quarterly Communications to see a list of changes we make throughout the year. If you have any questions or feedback, email us at webmaster@middlebury.edu.

Q4 FY2024 (April - June 2024)

Items in italics have been carried over from last quarter.

Public Drupal Sites (www.middlebury.edu)

• Launch a new website for the radio station, WRMC 91.1 FM.
• Use www.middlebury.edu/events as the source of event information for the Institute site.
• Launch a new site for the Energy2028 effort celebrating reaching the halfway point.
• Redesign and relaunch MiddHistory Online.
• Work with an SEO consulting firm to improve the discoverability of Institute program pages.
• Fix the display of the “Add another component” button in the editing interface.
• Add “chaptered navigation” as an option for the Story content type.
• Improve the Dynamic and Curated Event Calendar List components to allow showing ticket pricing and the event body rather than the event teaser. Also add a date range option to the Dynamic lists.
• Replace the old group-based footer/sidebar blocks on Office sites with the new style footers.
• Add the course list components to all sites.
• Remove the custom middlebury_tabs module and use the core alternative.
• Remove the block_content_permissions module and use the core alternative.
• Remove the allowed_formats module and use the core alternative.
• Remove the helpfulness module as the associated “Was this helpful?” component.
• Change all Program, Center, Area of Focus, and other deprecated content types on the Institute site to Top Level pages. Ensure that Top Level pages have access to appropriate components.
• Publish a policy for use of analytics tools, like Google Analytics, on our sites.
• Ensure that the Olark, Zoom Assistant and LibChat widgets do not block important footer links.

Accessibility

• Intro animation on the College homepage needs better presentation for users with prefers-reduced-motion enabled in their browser.
• H2 in Main Navigation appear in the document before the H1.
• Links are not always clearly identifiable.
• Social media links should have alt text.
• Elements with roles (header, nav, section) need to be inside the required context.
• Review the accessibility of the audio player component.
• Theme panels are too dark.

Course Hub (courses.middlebury.edu)

• Migrate hosting of the Course Hub to Pantheon, allowing us to shut down the on-premises Drupal servers.
• Collaborate with DLINQ to create an admin dashboard of reports, perhaps using PowerBI.
• Adam is scoping a new portfolio of work requests from DLINQ.

Middlebury Magazine

• Migrate hosting of the Magazine site to Pantheon, allowing us to shut down the on-premises WordPress server.

WordPress (sites.miis.edu)

• Migrate hosting of MIIS WordPress sites to the CampusPress hosted instance of sites.middlebury.edu, allowing us to shut down the on-premises WordPress server.

Directory (directory.middlebury.edu)

• Determine a solution on handling updates for Office Hours in Drupal and the Directory. For example, updates to office hours should be immediately reflected in Profiles without the need to edit the individual profiles in Drupal OR editing the Profile in Drupal should update the Active Directory.

Drupal Forms (forms.middlebury.edu, forms.miis.edu)

• Retire this service.

MediaWiki (mediawiki.middlebury.edu)

• Retire this service.

AD Group Manager (go/groups)

• Retire this service.

Calendar Year 2024 (January - December 2024)

Public Drupal Sites (www.middlebury.edu)

• Develop a policy for the use of generative AI in the creation of content for our websites.
• Implement account lifecycle management for editor accounts to ensure that people who no longer need to edit the website are removed without disruption to ongoing editors.
• Create and launch a new site for WRMC.
• Partner with Communications and Marketing to design a way to highlight social media on the sites of offices and programs which use these channels.
• Collaborate with Communications and Marketing to evolve our current design into a design system that can be used for multiple purposes.
• Continue to evolve the website for the Campaign for Middlebury and the homepage for Middlebury College.
• Revise and streamline the ITS site content to be more reflective of our audience needs.
• Design a process for highlighting scholarly works on our sites.
• Consider whether to continue to use the Group module for “office” sites and, if so, allow groups to have multiple newsrooms and migrate the menu configuration into group objects.

Drupal Forms (forms.middlebury|miis.edu)

• Complete the transition of all forms still in use to Google, Microsoft, Qualtrics, or another appropriate service to be determined.

Course Hub (courses.middlebury.edu)

• Migrate courses.middlebury.edu to an off-premises managed hosting provider, Pantheon, so that they are no longer geographically bound to Middlebury, VT.

WordPress (sites.middlebury|miis.edu)

• The sites currently at sites.miis.edu will be migrated into our managed provider, CampusPress, and have their URL updated to be sites.middlebury.edu.
• We will move the Middlebury Magazine site from on-premises hosting to a managed hosting provider, Pantheon, but its URL, design, and functionality will not change.

GO (go.middlebury.edu)

• Improve the resiliency of this service, possibly by fronting it with a caching system like Fastly, to ensure that on-premises service disruptions do not affect its operation.
• Change the authentication process from CAS to SAML.
• Update the design to match our other sites.

Course Catalog (catalog.middlebury.edu)

• Replace the Zend framework with Laminas or Symfony.
• Change the authentication process from CAS to SAML.
• Update the design to match our other sites.

Directory (directory.middlebury.edu)

• Determine a long-term plan for this service.
• Change the authentication process from CAS to SAML.

Omeka (omeka.middlebury.edu)

• Retire this service.

Concerto (concerto.middlebury.edu)

• Retire this service.

Long Term Plans

Public Drupal Sites (www.middlebury.edu)

We would like to eventually move our “components” from being created using Drupal’s Paragraphs module over to the core Layout Builder module which has an improved editing UI. Along with this we plan to conduct a UI/UX design review of the editing experience.

Our current site search system relies on Google Custom Search Engine, which is exactly the same as searching Google with the text “site:middlebury.edu” in your search string. We could be using other features of this platform, such as search promotion and refinements, or could pivot to a new search system with other features. We would like to explore our options in this space.

The Campus Map used to run on a custom system that used the Google Maps API which we then moved to a vendor-provided system. We think there’s a lot more we have to offer through this application to help people get around campus and explore the physical space.

As we consider a new policy for Google Analytics usage on our sites, we know that many of our editors would like access to some very simple stats about the pages on their sites. Google Analytics provides far more information than is needed and makes the necessary data difficult to retrieve. We want to offer our editors better access to the data they desire.