{"id":1405,"date":"2026-04-02T16:42:48","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T15:42:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/communications\/?p=1405"},"modified":"2026-05-20T09:46:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T08:46:10","slug":"digital-platforms-and-developments-march-2026-summary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/communications\/2026\/04\/02\/digital-platforms-and-developments-march-2026-summary\/","title":{"rendered":"Digital Platforms and Developments March 2026 summary"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Getting closer to launch for the HR web rebuild, blog platform theme progress, news branch migration, staff listing improvements and more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>HR web rebuild<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We&#8217;ve continued our involvement with the technical side of the <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/communications\/2026\/03\/25\/new-hr-web-pages-coming-soon\/\">HR web rebuild<\/a>, which will be going live in mid-April. This month that involved:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Successful completion of content and media imports.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Go-live prep meetings covering access control updates and redirect checking.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Starting to look into turning the &#8220;create a site structure via the API&#8221; process into a general-purpose tool for future use cases.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Blogs platform theme update<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Another project that&#8217;s close to being complete, our work on updating our blog theme this month included:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Making accessibility fixes and creating an accessibility statement.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Meeting with colleagues from MRAO to brainstorm the landing page for the <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/student-voices\/\">Student Voices blog<\/a> and working on some custom pieces of functionality.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Building a CMS content type to pull in listings of latest blog posts into CMS pages (we have this already for the Student Voices blog, but not as a general purpose content type).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"487\" height=\"960\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/communications\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/04\/uoydev.wpenginepowered.com_communications_.jpg?resize=487%2C960&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1406\" style=\"width:329px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/communications\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/04\/uoydev.wpenginepowered.com_communications_.jpg?w=487&amp;ssl=1 487w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/communications\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/04\/uoydev.wpenginepowered.com_communications_.jpg?resize=152%2C300&amp;ssl=1 152w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 487px) 100vw, 487px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Preview of the new blog theme applied to the Digital and Creative Services blog<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We&#8217;ll be getting in touch with other blog owners soon to start planning the move to the new theme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>News branch migration<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Our work on CMS content types for this was mostly done a few months ago, but the rebuilt central <a href=\"https:\/\/www.york.ac.uk\/news-and-events\/\">news and events branch<\/a> went live this month, meaning that another large chunk of the website has been switched over from our old &#8216;Classic&#8217; templates to use the newer Digital Pattern Library.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-full\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"314\" height=\"960\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/communications\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/04\/www.york_.ac_.uk_news-and-events_news_2026_research_stone-age-cooking_.jpg?resize=314%2C960&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1407\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/communications\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/04\/www.york_.ac_.uk_news-and-events_news_2026_research_stone-age-cooking_.jpg?w=314&amp;ssl=1 314w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/communications\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/04\/www.york_.ac_.uk_news-and-events_news_2026_research_stone-age-cooking_.jpg?resize=98%2C300&amp;ssl=1 98w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 314px) 100vw, 314px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">A example press release in the newly redesigned central news section<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Staff listings for interdisciplinary centres<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We&#8217;ve been building new functionality into the CMS so that staff who are members of interdisciplinary centres as well as a department can have a single &#8216;staff member&#8217; content item that will appear in both places, avoiding the need to duplicate content. We&#8217;re finalising some aspects of how this will work, and building in functionality to support departmental research groupings too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Other things<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Completed our updates to CMS content types to help with discovery of the research newsletter so there&#8217;s now a promo automatically added in various locations such as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.york.ac.uk\/news-and-events\/news\/2026\/research\/stone-age-cooking\/\">research press releases<\/a>.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Built an on-brand email template to be used for the confirmation email when undergraduate students sign up for our email newsletter, replacing a much plainer old version.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Held a mini retrospective following some issues with the CMS publish, and then made some tweaks to our processes to minimise the chance of the same issue reoccurring.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Finalising paperwork for upcoming recruitments in the team.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Preparations for Clearing have begun, with kickoff meetings for the various workstreams we&#8217;re involved with.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>CMS support for the annual updates for course pages.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>We had our quarterly Digital and Creative Services away morning earlier in the month, and have had a few meetings of the &#8216;Peaks and potholes&#8217; group that we formed as a result of it to help improve the experience of future new starters in the team.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Getting closer to launch for the HR web rebuild, blog platform theme progress, news branch migration, staff listing improvements and more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[70],"class_list":["post-1405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-digital-platforms-and-developments"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","uoy_author":{"name":"Paul Kelly","bio":"Digital Platforms and Developments Manager","image":{"src":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=200&d=mm&r=g","width":200,"height":200,"alt":""}},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1405\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.york.ac.uk\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}