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Frequently Asked Questions


Website Design Upgrade


If you're not seeing any answers to your questions, submit a help ticket inside ethe CMS (user access required) and we'll be glad to assist you!

 

This upgrade is all about giving UW’s website a modern, user-friendly look that’s consistent and accessible after more than a decade of the same design. The new templates will make it easier for site editors to build and maintain pages without needing custom code or complex configurations.

Not yet. We’ll guide you through the migration options in future communications. You’ll have the choice between automatic migration to the closest match or rebuilding your pages with new templates. We’ll give you plenty of time to decide.

Please consider attending our Live Learning Sessions to learn more about your migration options and how you can prepare.

Carefully consider how much time you have to dedicate between January and summer 2025. If you have been wanting to rebuild your site, Migration Option 2 is a great choice to make that a reality but it will require you to prepare your page content in advance before rebuilding your pages.

Option 1 is also a perfectly acceptable choice, but it is also important to be aware that transitioning old designs to new ones can have unexpected outcomes.

Depending on the migration option you choose, your current pages will be transferred into new templates that math the closest possible design from our new templates. While we’re working hard to make this transition as seamless as possible, there may be some differences, and a review period will allow you to make any necessary adjustments. If you choose otpion one, your new pages can be rebuild into oe of our new templates. In the coming months, you will be prompted to choose one of these options.

Learn more about the migration options.

Unfortunately, no. Each site must choose one migration option for all its pages—either the automatic closest match or a full rebuild. We’ll help you understand the pros and cons of each so you can make the best choice for your needs.

Consider attending our upcoming Live Learning Sessions to learn more about the pros and cons of each migration choice.

No, custom CSS and JavaScript won’t be supported in the new templates. This change ensures consistency and security across UW’s websites, but don’t worry—the templates are designed to provide everything you need for a polished, professional look.

 

The sandbox site is a test environment where you can preview your pages with the new design before they go live. This review stage allows you to check for any issues and make adjustments as needed without affecting your live site.

Site editors will have approximately eight (8) weeks to review or rebuild their pages before the new design goes live. If any specific blackout dates are needed, we’ll let you know well in advance.

If you're choosing to rebuild your pages, check out one of our Live Learning Sessions to learn how you can prepare for this rebuild in advance.

Yes! We’ll offer training resources, including live sessions, recorded tutorials and access to Milanote for planning your content. Once the sandbox site becomes available and ready for your page review or rebuild, we will also provide a brief required training to access the new templates. Our goal is to ensure you feel confident using the new templates.

 

Questions from Live Learning Session 1


Miss the session?

View our recording!

Note: You will be prompted to enter your name and email to watch the recording. This is intended for tracking purposes.

 


We recommend speaking with you co-editors, team, supervisor and/or site owners as this should be a group decision based on what time is available to you to partake in this process.


As long as the links are properly connected with the dependency tag we will not have broken links. All the pictures and pages that are published and live will come to the new templates totally fine.


We've worked closely with the Modern Campus team to find the closest match template and make sure they can properly be written over. In addition to the preview of mirgrating designs in the Live Learning Session recording, we will provide site editors with a preview of the migrating designs.

The sandbox will give you the same functionality that you have in the site today. You can always delete unneeded files in your site. Moving files and reorganzing sites is not able to be done by site editors. Our team will cover site clean up in a later live learning event that we encourage editors to attend!

These designs are fully mobile optimized! If you view the templates on your mobile device, you'll be able to preview that. Mindy designed each template with a mobile design as well, so they're fully ready to go on all devices!

Also, most web browsers have the option to toggle a view to mobile view. This is usually in the "developer tools" in your browser menu options. So, if you're looking at the template examples on your desktop, you can also view a mobile version that way.

No. You will need to use the designs available. However, info cards used in the new templates have an icon available to them so you will be able to use that as an added graphic element on new pages.

We will be updating the photo sizes information at a later time. You'll be able to find it in the same place it currently is now in our tutorials.

Your choice between option 1 or 2 will apply across the whole site. However, you can always rebuilt select pages if you have selcted option 1.

If you need help to choose which option is better for you, we are glad to help you out. Please sign up for our open labs.

Site owners are not always also site editors, so only someone that is an active site editor for your site is able to access the CMS to delete files.

We will be releasing the process soon for site editors who will receive a main index page rebuild by choosing Option 2, along with sites who are part of our high-impact top 100 pages.


We recommend that you review your site for errors, broken links, unlinked files, etc. One of the upcoming Live Learning Sessions will go over this during "Preparing Your Site for Migration with Easy Cleanup".

At this point, though, we do not recommend any major reorganization for your sites.


We will migrate all the iframes and it should come out fine. We have not done the testing yet, but will make sure that they look exactly as they are suppose to. We will give you more information as test it out.


If you choose option 1, your migrated pages won't have the same editing experience as the new templates. Once you're ready to build new pages, you will have the same simplified, editing experience when you're building a page from a template.

Option 1 will use migrated content so anticipate the experience to be the same for editable regions as it is today on migrated pages. However, your Page Parameters will still match what is in the new templates which means they will be simplied.


If you are choosing Option 1, we will not be building your index page for you. You will still be able to request help using the regular help ticket system or you can schedule an appointment in the open labs. Later on, we will also have a template training that all site editors will need to take.


Yes, sections will still be able to be turned off and on as they are today!


These will all be handled by Institutional Marketing and won't need any editing. The degree pages are getting a bit of an upgrade too, but shouldn't need any edits. We should be good to go on these. All the links will be the same too!


We are not transfering any CSS or Javascript so if you page is using any external styling, you will need to probably change the content to the new templates you have available. We are available to help you choose the template for your page through open labs.


Site owners are not always also site editors. Only active site editors with access to your site will be able to create or edit your site.


This page has more details about site owners: https://www.uwyo.edu/web/site-editors/site-owner.html  and this page has information and helpful links for current site editors: https://www.uwyo.edu/web/site-editors/current-site-editor.html 


Milanote is not connected to the CMS in any way. It is a tool to help you visualize how to build your page content using our prepared examples for each page template. However, you will be able to easily export your page content for simple copy and pasting into your new templates should you choose Option 2.


Yep! You are still able to use pictures that are not from Canto, just be sure to use the correct sizing which when available, will be in our template image sizes page.


Option 1 or 2 would be chosen for the entire directory so if you have multiple site editors or owners, we recomment discussing internally and coming to the decision.


You can build your own site map in a variety of ways. One of the upcoming Live Learning Sessions will include some suggestions for this: "Preparing Your Site for Migration with Easy Cleanup".


We will be going over the pros of using Milanote more in-depth during the Feb. 13 Live Learning Session. In a nutshell, all the snippets and components are already build out for you and all you have to do is input text and images, making the "copying and pasting" into the CMS a breeze when we get to that point. I've built many word document outlines of websites and they're no where as near as nice or easy to use as Milanote and it's everything is already built for you! Again, all you have to do is type your content, download everything when you're done, and copy and paste!


A form where you will declare which option you will be using will be sent out the first week of feb. with a due date at the end of the month. If you select option 2, you will gain access to Milanote soon after you submit your form. Once the choice of option 1 or 2 has been made, it cannot be changed. You will have a few months to content plan in Milanote but if you have a large site or are nervous about the time needed, remeber you can always choose option 1 and rebuild select pages!


You may rebuild pages with the new templates as soon as the sandbox site become available. So if you chose option 1, you willl still be able to rebuild a page or add a page using new templates as early as the review period. You will also be able to do this after we are live with the new designs.


Yes. We will be prioritizing Milanote access first for Option 2 users, but anyone is welcome to use milanote.


For Option 2, we would only be building the main directory folder index page, and not any subfolder pages. So, all other pages in the directory would be the responsibility of your site's editors to build. If you have too many pages for you to rebuild, then you might want to go with Option 1.


We have not done the testing yet and will let everyone know as we get to the testing phase. But be assured that it will come over and you will be able to edit those.


This would greatly depend on the size of your site and your time allotment for rebuild. Our team would be glad to help you decide in an open lab. Please sign up for our open labs here: https://www.uwyo.edu/web/support/open-lab.html


They will come over fine if they are actually being linked somewhere on a live webpage. So basically if your page is live and has images, they will be there after the migration. The images that will not come over are the ones that are not linked anywhere are just being stored in the CMS. If you are choosing Option 2, there will be no need to bring images over to the new site because the sizes will not work for the imagery within the templates.


Right now our Upgrade page has a loose timeline and once we have official dates, we will let you know!


Yes! You can choose Option 1 but it might not have the proper match for the template, it might just be content without any styling.

 


We will communicate with site editors who manage high impact pages soon. We do not anticipate this impacting your migration choice and will have more details on how those pages will be built.

 


Sorry, code editing will not be permitted in the new templates. We are doing this so that we do not need the coding knowledge to have a beautiful website.

 


We can share your site board with multiple editors! The site groups (access groups) that are assigned to your site currently will be the same as what will be assigned in to your sandbox site.


Pages will be written to the new site using option 1 with the same content that is on your live pages. If that content is not correct or you do not want it that way, you will need to correct it before the migration. The migration script does not have liberties to write incorrect content, it simply crawls the page, looks at what is there and then puts itinto the new page in the sandbox site.

Need additional assistance?

Check out our CMS tutorials

Attend one of our Virtual Open Labs hosted once per week:
Tuesdays: 10 - 11 a.m. and 1:30 - 5 p.m. (academic year hours)


Don't forget the Request Help Gadget!
Located in the top right of your screen inside the CMS.

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