Category Archives: Service Updates

Launch of new snippets and updated snippet pack

We are pleased to announce the launch of a completely overhauled snippet pack for Chronos which will bring many new features and snippets to web publishers. We have taken on your feedback after organising several focus groups as well as one-to-one sessions during website development projects; the outcome of which led us to:

  1. A cleaner and clearer snippet pack
  2. Launch of new snippets (buttons, twitter, tables, KAR – more information below)

1. A cleaner and clearer snippet pack

Along with adding new snippets, we also carry out regular reviews of our ever-growing pack as a whole. As a result, we have found the naming convention of certain snippets to be rather misleading for publishers. Moreover, the previous version of the pack also suffered from excessive number of subcategories within certain snippets, leading to duplication of functionality and ultimately, confusion.

For instance, we had 3 different Thumbnail snippets; Thumbnail, Index-main and Index-left. As well as a complete style refresh, now there are only two Thumbnail snippets; one with and one without background. Such improvements are abundant in the new pack and we hope it will provide a more enjoyable publishing experience.

2. Launch of new snippets

We’ve been working very hard on providing modern functionality and design principles within the Chronos brand. It all started late last year with the release of the Social media snippet and a minor update to the Accordion. Whilst a larger project is underway to design and develop an updated brand (expected early 2016), we felt that continuing to update Chronos was essential so we’ve brought you some minor and major updates:

  • Buttons: A whole new set of buttons to replace the Chronobuttons. This is a major overhaul of the buttons with the aim to bring simplicity and a modern look and feel to your website. The number on offer is reduced while versatility is increased. It is easier than ever to choose the right button for the right job. (Knowledge base article)
  • Tables: It now provides publishers the option to use any 3 of their site colours as the header and also increases spacing around the text for a lighter and more modern look and feel.  Updating any tables you have with this new snippet will breathe some life into your departmental web presence and instantly make it feel current (Knowledge base article).
  • Twitter: A minor update based on feedback introduces an optional fixed height which will be particularly useful for home pages. Stylistic enhancements also mean better integration of the website’s colour scheme. (Knowledge base article)
  • KAR: A minor update based on feedback from web publishers to include additional referencing styles. (Knowledge base article)

Don’t forget to update your snippet pack to take advantage of all of these new features:

If you encounter any issues at all or have any feedback, please contact us at websupport@kent.ac.uk. We are always happy to hear all feedback.

Yesterdays rollout of the tables snippet

Dear web publishers, 

Yesterday we rolled out a central update to the table snippet with the aim of modernising the look and feel to be more consistent with the recent changes made to Chronos. Following testing, we reverted the update as it had unintended affects to a minority of webpages that use tables to lay content out.

Our intention is to plan for a more gradual rollout in the new year where the changes will be available on www-test for several weeks so that all departmental web publishers have an opportunity to have a look through their pages and let us know if there are any problems.

It is recommended that where possible, web best practice should be used when laying out content in a page. This can accomplished using our layout snippets. All support documentation on layout snippets, such as the columns or grids, can be found on our Knowledegbase:

If you would like any assistance in updating your pages or would like some advice on whether tables, columns or grids should be used, please feel free to contact websupport@kent.ac.uk who would be happy to help.

Many thanks for your patience and apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Best wishes,
Web Support

Launch of the new Publisher Control Panel for web publishers

Dear web publishers,

Web Solutions are pleased to announce the launch of the Departmental Publisher Control Panel (PCP). Once enabled, it appears on every page of your departments website on www-test to provide a convenient way to access commonly used internal systems and sites that web publishers make use of (news blog, events factory, configuration tool, Google analytics and the Knowledgebase). These links are unique to each department/site which provides a personalised central repository of convenient links for web publishers.

More information on the PCP can be found here:

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated as we add more features in the coming months to help make web publishing easier for you and your teams.

Kindest regards,
Web Support

Changes to comScore (sitestat) and Web Analytics service

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Dear Web Publishers,

After much investigation by IS and due to declining usage over the past year, from Saturday 9th August, comScore (Sitestat) will no longer be available for Web Publishers and will be removed from our service portfolio. This means that publishers will not be able to access the comScore website and web analytics.

We ask that any publishers making use of the PDF tracking functionality with comScore, remove the custom code from their website (each link will start with https://uk.sitestat.com/kent) otherwise we will incur additional costs. This will likely affect very few publishers as Google Analytics has been adopted by many for their tracking requirements.

In the short term if you require access to web analytics please contact websupport@kent.ac.uk and they will have an account set up for you.

We are in the process of introducing Google Analytics into our service portfolio and expect to have it fully supported in the Autumn. This will provide you with more assistance when running queries on your website and how to interpret and use the data. In the meantime, if you require assistance there is online documentation, video tutorials and forums to help you get started just by doing a simple web search.

If you have any questions at all please feel free to contact us.

Kind regards,
Web Support

Web publisher release notes: 13/06/14

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Dear web publishers,

The web templating engine and snippets have recently been updated with the following bug fixes:

  • Gallery snippet: improved compatibility within the case studies and staff profiles content snippets including the javascript tabs
  • Staff profiles full page summary snippet: minor bug fix when a title is not included
  • Courses summary snippet: default parameter field now responds correctly no matter if you use caps or lower case

No further action is needed from web publishers. If you have any questions please contact us on websupport@kent.ac.uk

Best wishes,
Websupport

Release of new Courses snippet for web publishers

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Dear web publishers,

Information Services in conjunction with EMS, have recently released some new snippets for academic schools to display their course information in a consistent way, whilst reducing maintenance and unnecessary duplicate information. Here’s an example of what the set of snippets looks like.

Benefits

  • They enable school websites’ course information to be consistent with the central course pages;
  • Ease of updating: when course information changes in the online prospectus (Programmes Plant), it will be updated wherever the snippet appears on the Kent website (ie, on school pages and central course pages).

 

Why use them?

The University recommends that schools should start using the snippets at the earliest opportunity. It will help us to comply with one of the major themes of the Higher Education Review (HER) in early 2015:

The provision of information with an ‘expectation that information for intended audiences about the learning opportunities on offer is fit for purpose, accessible and trustworthy’.  The use of snippets, which draws from an agreed information source (the Programmes Plant), will facilitate compliance with HEFCE expectations.

How to get them?

In the new Dreamweaver snippet pack, you will find:

  • Course Summary snippet: pulls a list of your school’s courses into your website (from the central online prospectus, programmes plant).
  • Course Content snippet: pulls your school’s course pages into your website (from the central online prospectus, programmes plant).

To access the new snippets now, download the latest snippet pack on our sample site. Instructions on how to install it on your machine are part of our how do I setup and use Dreamweaver article. If your snippet pack automatically updates, you should see it within the next week. If you are unsure please contact websupport@kent.ac.uk

How to use the snippets

If you would like any help or advice, please contact websupport@kent.ac.uk or ext 4851 and we would be happy to help.

Kindest regards,
Information Services

Access to web test server from off campus

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Dear Web publishers,

A minor change has been made which may affect the minority of publishers who edit web content on www-test.kent.ac.uk whilst off campus.

If you receive any 403 error messages:

  • Please contact helpdesk@kent.ac.uk so that the volume of affected staff can be monitored
  • Arrange for any modified web content to made from on campus

Our apologies for any inconvenience that this may cause.

Best Wishes
Departmental Web Solutions

Information Services
websupport@kent.ac.uk
http://www.kent.ac.uk/web/
01227 (82)4851

Web-server storage approaching its limit

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Dear web publishers,

Please note that the webserver is currently running at 90% storage capacity and Departmental Web Solutions would like to ask for your assistance in bringing this down.

A good clearing out of any website is essential to ensure server performance is high, and websites are easily maintainable for yourself and future web publishers within your department. Could you please spend an hour of your time looking through your websites and removing any files that are no longer required, particularly focusing on the following:

  • Deletion of “/old” folders that are no longer needed on both www-test and www-live (if you are not comfortable with deleting files on live, please contact us).
  • Deletion of “/Archive” folders that are no longer needed on both www-test and www-live.
  • Transfer of any videos to the video streaming server.
  • Transfer of any learning related materials to Moodle where appropriate
  • Ensure all images are in a web friendly JPG format.

As usual we recommend that all publishers first make a copy of their files (on to dvd/external disk) before deletion. We can also provide a link check report for your site upon request.

In addition file organisation is essential to providing clear URLs for users:

  • All images should be stored within a designated images folder
  • All documents should be stored within a designated documents folder
  • Files and folders should not have any spaces or capital letters. For example, “MA in Psychology” should be “ma-in-psychology.html”

If you need help, or would like to discuss your web requirements, Web Solutions will be happy to assist and can be contacted on ext: 4851 or websupport@kent.ac.uk.

For more tips and advice please see our Kent on the Web Knowledgebase.

Best Wishes

Departmental Web Solutions

Changes to University of Kent search

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Dear web publishers,

The University of Kent search page will be undergoing some maintenance work on Tuesday 4th of February which will result in some minor changes to the way the service allocates resource to the indexing of pages.

The Kent website will only be indexed by our search facility daily. When publishing, please be aware that it may take up to 24 hours before your pages are searchable via http://search.kent.ac.uk/.

If you have any questions please feel free to contact websupport@kent.ac.uk

Service interruption to KentBlogs and NewsBlogs service

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Dear web publishers,

The WordPress blogging platform will be undergoing an update on Tuesday 17th December which will improve the user interface for the administration panel. A small amount of disruption is expected between 9am and 10am.

This will affect all users that use KentBlogs and the users of the News blogs publishing solution for their departmental website.

More information can be found on the WordPress website.

Our apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.

Best Wishes

Web Consultancy and Solutions
Requirements and Solutions
Information Services
websupport@kent.ac.uk
http://www.kent.ac.uk/web/
01227 (82)4851