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Published August 07, 2023
Standard site editors will no longer be able to add Custom CSS and JavaScript when building new pages.
Over the years, our site editors have been an instrumental part of our ability to build fresh, new content that helps promote all that the University of Wyoming has to offer. UW's website editing process is based on a decentralized model, which allows for interested department to dedicate a resource to help edit and maintain their web pages. We currently have nearly 375 site editors who work on these pages, accounting for 300+ site directories with approximately 38,000 total web pages.
After considerable options have been weighed, our administrators have made the decision
to omit the ability for site editors to add custom CSS and JavaScript when building
NEW pages in the CMS beginning September 15, 2023. Please continue reading to ensure
you understand the impact this may have to your site directory's future page use.
Security Considerations
With our conversion to Omni, our CMS administrators implementation team re-evaluated
the security and stability requirements needed to serve the Omni CMS web content.
This team, which is made up of several members from IT, Institutional Marketing, and
the Account Security Office, discovered the impending need to limit the possibility
of malicious and/or malformed code from posing a major security risk to each one of
our 300+ site directories. Poorly written or malicious code poses a number of security
and stability issues that directly impact the integrity of our site and the university's
reputation. Given the considerable investment in both our site editors and our new
system, these security vulnerabilities and stability considerations are the driving
force behind our decision to limit custom CSS and JavaScript.
Usability & Brand Consistency
In addition to our priority of keeping UW's website assets secure, usability and branding concerns have come into view over the years. Based on our decentralized model, website editors are provided a standard level of training to be able to create pages, conduct edits and maintain their web pages within the branded templates available at this time. Custom CSS and JavaScript creates an inequitable experience for both the end user (people visiting our website as guests) and our site editors. While some site editors possess immense knowledge of custom coding, others are less advanced knowledge and are not able to create the same type of website experience for their visitors using customizations. This has created an inconsistent experience for many which also helped inform our decision to limit future customizations on new pages.
At this time, we are only limiting the use of custom CSS & JavaScript on NEW pages (pages that have not been built yet) inside Omni. We recognize there is a need for vastly improved templates & features inside Omni. That is why we do not intend to remove this functionality for site editor who are already using custom CSS/JS on their existing pages until we have highly-functional, new templates available for everyone to use that do not require advanced knowledge of CMS editing. We will notify site editors with advanced notice of when custom page CSS & JS will no longer be allowed on all CMS web pages.
We do not currently have a timeframe for releasing new templates to site editors, but please be assured we are working hard on the next phase of UW's website improvement strategy which will hopefully include new website templates that contain the functionality, usability and aesthetic appeal that is lacking in many of our old templates currently place.
When used in combination or on their own, custom CSS and JavaScript that is implemented on a page-by-page basis mainly controls the look and/or actions of a page's styles, drop downs, structural arrangement, etc. There are very few cases where a page's content information cannot be achieved through the options available within our templates or other areas such as Omni assets.
If you feel as though any of your future new pages cannot function without the use of CSS or JS, we would highly encourage you to attend one of our advanced 90-minute open lab sessions to discuss potential alternatives for your page.
Navigation is a critical part of the usability experience, however navigation can also be achieved (yep - even on full-width pages!) without the use of custom CSS and/or JavaScript.
Check out our latest navigation addition to full-width pages which are implemented entirely through components. You can also attend one of our advanced 90-minute open labs if you which to speak with one of our CMS administrators about the option of implementing a navigation asset that can easily be placed on any of your pages and only needs to be edited in the asset itself.
We are working towards a better navigation option on full-width pages that could potentially include drop-down features as we enter our design phase of our website improvement strategy.
To maintain consistency and fairness for all site editors, we cannot grant exceptions for site editors who wish to use CSS and JS on their new web pages.
If you feel as though any of your future new pages cannot function without the use of CSS or JS, we would highly encourage you to attend one of our advanced 90-minute open lab sessions to discuss potential alternatives for your page.
Need additional assistance?
Check out our Omni CMS tutorials
Attend one of our Virtual Open Labs hosted once per week:
Tuesdays: 1:30 - 5 p.m.
Don't forget the Request Help Gadget!
Located in the top right of your screen inside Omni CMS.