I used to console one of my teams by saying “Don’t worry, we’ll get there.” It seemed like a cliché statement but usually conveyed the upbeat optimism often needed by a project manager. While I recognized there were obstacles and challenges, it always seemed like a natural way to keep up everyone’s spirits in the face of tasks that continued to pile on.
Until one day after saying this phrase, one of my team members said, “But where is ‘there?’” He was a bit of a philosopher, so we all had a good laugh at the existential question.
Getting there is the goal. Getting there can also be the journey. Getting all the website content migrated is a “there” in my mind. With over 6,000 webpages, “there” can seem like a distant star.
Getting “there” one page at a time.
The migration of content from OU Campus to Drupal is in full swing. The Web team of Developers and Student Workers have begun the task of moving content over. The first groups to be affected by the migration are the
- Office of Communications and Marketing
- Office of the Chancellor
- Office of Information Technology
- Division of Finance and Administration (all departments).
In order to maintain a synchronized migration, editors in OU Campus will be temporarily locked out of the sites they maintain. This is similar to the process we used during the website refresh last year. While the sites are locked down, any changes should be submitted via the Web Request portal.
As work begins for each group, we are notifying the department heads to let them know the process for changes and an approximate timeline while pages are migrated. Depending on the number of web pages for each group, the timeline will vary.
Before we can go live in Drupal with the new pages, we have to have enough moved over due to the number of linked pages across the entire site.
So what is being migrated? Current content. At this time, we are reviewing content and moving everything that is dated 2019-2020 fiscal and academic years.
Archives, minutes from meetings in calendar years older than 2019, conference websites from the past and anything with a date older than 2018 are not being moved at this time. This doesn’t mean these pages may not be moved in the future, but we are focusing on the timely, up-to-date information needed by students, recruits, employees and external audiences.
Section Editors will receive training in the new system on an ongoing schedule as the migration occurs.
We are determining rounds based on resources to move content and editor availability. The next round of migration will cover these areas:
- Library
- Research
- SimCenter
- Graduate School
- Office of Development and Alumni Affairs.
Round three will consist of
- Academic Affairs
- OPEIR
- Walker Center for Teaching and Learning
- Faculty Senate
- General Education
- Center for Professional Education.
All other departments and offices to follow will be announced as we finalize Rounds 1 through 3 above. To maintain our aggressive pace, we need to move 1,000 pages a month for the next six months or 250 pages a week. We have all hands-on deck for this effort.
And when all is said and done, we anticipate we will be “there” by August 1.