Content Design team round up: December 2025

Hello! The Content Design team in Communications consists of myself and Harriet. Our small team works on a variety of web content projects. It’s been a packed end to the year. Here is what we have been working on over the last month.

Main projects (large-scale migrations and rebuilds)

These are our most significant, resource-intensive projects which are ongoing at the moment.

HR web migration

We’re in the throes of detailed and complex content planning for a large-scale web migration project: moving the HR web pages from Dreamweaver to our Web CMS.

• We’re finalising a sitemap of over 600 pages.
• We’ve worked on content models and prototypes for various pages.
• We’re working on a migration plan and timeline, including exploring migration automation possibilities with our Digital team.

Department web rebuilds

We’re continuing to facilitate the Department web rebuild projects, working with the Faculty Spokes team on the final round of academic department web rebuilds. Five rebuilds are currently underway at various stages of implementation.

We’ve also worked on a direction of travel plan for the web rebuilds of six multidisciplinary centres, in readiness for moving onto these next.

IT web rebuild

We’re wrapping up this big web rebuild project.

• We’ve developed a plan for transitioning the project to business as usual (BAU) maintenance with clear roles and responsibilities.
• We’re writing a short wrap-up report.
• We’re preparing some communications to send to the IT Services team so everyone knows how web updates are requested and how decisions are made for significant changes.

Smaller projects and initiatives

These projects focus on specific content needs and enhancements.

• Departmental EDI web pages: We’re working with two departments on new equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) pages, following a framework we’ve developed – you can read more about this in my previous blog post.
• Student support web pages: We’ve been working with our Internal Comms team on various changes to the student support pages following various team changes.
• Content audit of the staff research branch: We’ve conducted a content audit of the staff research branch ahead of some future work to tidy up and rebuild the branch.

BAU and content maintenance tasks

Our BAU work tends to focus on ensuring our web content continues to be well-maintained and up-to-date.

Annual factual reviews

We’re currently working on a few recurring annual factual reviews, including:

• IT tools, software and services (Reviewing +200 web pages. We’ve liaised with 60+ subject matter experts and have a 73% response rate so far)
• EDI signposting pages for staff and students (Reviewing two pages)
• Core about us web pages (Reviewing three pages)

Content creation and support

• Project management tools: We published a new page about project management tools in the IT service catalogue.
• Heritage web page: We provided feedback on a new page about our strengths in heritage, which will live in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities section.

Team learning

• Content crit sessions: We’ve set up a scheduled collaborative session where individuals present content for constructive feedback, fostering skill development and improving content quality.
• Content design book club: We held a retrospective about a book club we have been running about all things content design.