OISE Websites

Migration timelines are set out based on the urgency to address unreliable infrastructure and the urgent need to utilize modern web tools for student recruitment and retention. 

Academic Departments
May – December 2022

Researcher sites & Administrative Offices
January – December 2023

OISE web migration completed
December 15, 2023

Drupal CMS migration is an OISE wide undertaking.  

Education Commons has established a Drupal project team with dedicated resources which will work with departmental designates for the purposes of this migration. The following are the roles and responsibilities for the migration initiative, including the pre-migration, migration, and post-migration activities: 

Education Commons is responsible for:

Department/Website leads are responsible for:

OISE Advancement and Communications team are responsible for:

Pre-migration Activities 

All departments and areas will be required to complete a list of pre-requisites before the migrations of their website to the new CMS. Education Commons is accountable for building appropriate expectations on scope, roles/responsibilities and associated timelines. 

Education Commons will:

1. Confirm Drupal site URL with departmental web lead
2. Follow a pre-defined and repeatable series of technical steps to bring sites online when migration of content is complete, also known as a “technical playbook.”

Departmental Pre-Migration Homework 

At least 30 days prior to migration Education Commons will meet with Department migration leads to consult on the steps to be taken before re-platforming can begin. We will walk through the preparation checklist, website page audit, and media preparation as outlined below:

1. Define the roles on your team

Deliverables:

• Determine your departmental website lead  
• Determine who else requires access to your website editor, and what are their roles 
• Who provides final approval before website updates are published? Is this person different than the website lead? 
• Provide EC with their names, UTORid and email addresses. 

2. Pre-migration meeting with Education Commons

Deliverables

• Meet with an Education Commons website team member.  
• Walk-through pre-migration checklist and confirm understanding of new website principles and standards 
• Become familiar with website inventory process and required outcomes 
• Establish goals, expectations and timelines required to begin migration 
• Communicate goals/expectations with your department  

3. Website Inventory

Deliverable:

• Based on the guidance provided by Education Commons, create a detailed list of all the pages and associated URLs on your website 
• Use the provided inventory template or create your own 
• Take note of PDFs or other files that will need to be removed or reworked for accessibility. 
• The purpose of the inventory is to  
  • make sure that all pages that need to be migrated are identified 
  • Define the site navigation, so pages are listed under the correct menus 

4. Prepare your media and save your content

• Back up any content that is not being migrated that you may wish to reference in the future. Legacy sites will not be archived.  
• Make sure that images and other files to be used on the new site are saved to SharePoint 
• Based on the website inventory, prepare images and files needed for migration 

In order to facilitate a smooth transition between platforms and equip the community responsible for the web presence in their department, the following learning resources have been designed. Drupal Fundamentals through Advanced Drupal training will take place concurrently with migration for DIY managed migration, and after the new site is live for Education Commons managed migration: 

Pre-Migration Homework: Begin 30 Days before migration commences
Format: Pre-booked Consultation

• Assigning a website lead  
• New website checklist intro and explanations
• Setting goals/expectations
• Webpage inventory  
• Website menu and navigation 
• Prepare media 
• Meet with EC to review status of deliverables 

Week One: Drupal Fundamentals

Format: Pre-booked Consultation

• Meeting with Education Commons for CMS onboarding 
• User roles
• Introduction to Drupal components and how to use them 
• Defy Gravity branding related to OISE
• SharePoint folder and file sharing established

Week Two: Beginner Drupal
Format: Pre-booked Consultation

• Basic design and layout fundamentals
• AODA requirements
• Train-the-trainer – Website lead attends a consult with EC web team member and EC Drupal developer.

On Request: Intermediate Drupal
Format: Consultation or workshop

Once 20 pages are created within Drupal 

• Understanding more complex pieces of Drupal
• Customizing functions/components to suit your websites needs
• Adding photos, multimedia, etc. to enhance content 

On Request: Advanced Drupal
Format: Virtual drop-in training

When site is near completion and ready to go live 

• How to move from custom CMS to Drupal
• Backing up content 
• Adding new users to Drupal environment
• Using SEO to reach a larger audience
• Implementing new components to enhance user experience

Available Weekly: Multimedia
Format: Consultation or workshop

• Weekly drop-in session with Technology Adoption Consultant
• Tuesdays 11:30AM – 12:30PM
• Community members are encouraged to ask questions related to U of T branding, AODA best practices and anything to do with multimedia

Available Weekly: SiteImprove and Google Analytics
Format: On-demand consultation, drop-in training, and published best practices. 

After your site is live.  

• Understanding your website audience
• Utilizing SiteImprove features to achieve AODA compliance

Website Fundamentals

Design Fundamentals

AODA 

Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA). In the province of Ontario, it is a legislated requirement to ensure compliance of web products to international accessibility standards such as WCAG. 

Website Content Backups 

Any content on OISE Drupal CMS is backed up nightly and weekly. Daily backups are retained for one week and weekly backups are retained for one month. 

Website longevity 

Longevity refers to the length of time that the website will be available on the Drupal system and can be found by a member of the public on the Internet. 

Website Archiving 

This refers to a preservation of a website in a long-term storage.

Website Hosting 

This refers to the physical and/or virtual location of the website artifacts (files, images, configuration, etc.). 

Application Hosting 

This refers to the physical and/or virtual location of the web application, its components, attributes, and other elements that make up the application.

404/Maintenance pages 

Every website requires a page that is displayed if a page is not found or an error occurs. In the context of this document, this means that a standard page will be developed and will reside in the OISE Drupal CMS that will be used every time there is an error. Similarly, maintenance pages would follow a standard that will be developed and used as required, such as during web outages.

Paid Drupal add-ons 

These are components that provide functionality or features that are available through the global Drupal community of practice. These are deemed considerable risk for OISE Drupal CMS stability and for the purposes of this standard, will not be considered in the OISE Drupal CMS. 

Drupal Media Library 

In order to manage finite Drupal media storage, a sustainable practice of deleting accumulated content is required. For the purposes of this document, media that is unused for six consecutive months will be deleted.  

 “Unused media” refers to any file imported to the website through the media bank that is not being used on the website, including images, PDFs, and any other stored documents. 

Used vs Unused media 

Actively used media is media with at least one (1) link to it on the website. For instance, an image may be used on a page or in a news story, or a link to a file may appear on a webpage. The content is in use and viewable by the general public without going into the backend of the Drupal system.  

Within the Drupal interface, Education Commons receives detailed information about everything uploaded. We can see the size, upload date, upload user, file type, and more. 

In the final column available to us, we can also see if the media file is being used. 

If an item is being shown as “Used in 0 places” it means it is unused. It may be a temporary image, uploaded incorrectly, was never used, or is no longer being used. These are the items we will be deleting from the system to save space and prevent accumulation of abandoned content. 

***Note: videos should not be imported as media and should only be available by linking. Should videos be found in the media bank, they will also be removed.