Training underway, content uploading beginning

The first in a series of Drupal training sessions for JIBC staff took place December 13. The training was for JIBC staff responsible for overall administration of the website: Insook Kim, John Trimble, Lori Munro and Chris Wong. Domain7 conducted the training with the actual website that’s being developed, so it was exciting to finally see our ideas for the site take shape.

Part two of training for this group will take place December 16. Also that day, training will begin of Local Admins, staff who have been designated by education and instrastructure departments to maintain web content for their areas. As part of the training, Local Admins will get hands-on experience using Drupal. (Local Admins unable to attend the December 16 training will be trained in January. Refresher sessions for already trained staff will also be held in January. Staff designated as Content Editors will be trained after the website launches.)

By the end of this week, Local Admins who have been trained will be able to begin the important process of uploading content to the site. As Drupal is a brand new web content management system for JIBC, we know there will be an adjustment period with many questions about the system. Communications & Marketing, Technology Services and Domain7 will provide staff with support throughout this critical stage of the project, when we populate the site and bring it to life.

Please contact Chris Wong or Lori Munro if you have any questions.

Peeling the web onion

As part of the website redesign, we’ve been looking behind the scenes of the current JIBC site and peeling the web onion that is www.jibc.ca. We’ve found quite a few pages and even entire websites that are under our domain but aren’t part of the main website’s navigation.  These include Community of Practice/Community of Learners pages, e-blast pages, sites for clients, and miscellaneous pages and sites.

We want to be clear that if there are divisional pages or sites that have not been documented in your area’s content discussions with Web Editor Krista Lambert, they won’t be online after the new website launches unless special arrangements are made. This includes hidden pages and other websites located under www.jibc.ca. The new website will be on a new server, configured for Drupal, and these non-core pages and sites can’t be moved to that server.  

If you have pages or websites that need to exist post-launch of the new website, action is required from your division. First, identify them in an email to Chris Wong or Lori Munro by December 10, 2010.  From there, we’ll work with you to figure out the best solution.  This could be migration to host.jibc.ca/nameofyourchoice, a campaign landing page on the new site, or deletion.  It’s all fairly straightforward, but absolutely can’t be left until the last minute! Thanks for your cooperation.