{"id":2608,"date":"2016-10-25T13:18:57","date_gmt":"2016-10-25T12:18:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/webdev\/?p=2608"},"modified":"2017-08-09T11:59:43","modified_gmt":"2017-08-09T10:59:43","slug":"a-summer-with-the-new-kent-web-theme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/webdev\/2016\/10\/25\/a-summer-with-the-new-kent-web-theme\/","title":{"rendered":"A summer with the new Kent web theme"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here\u2019s your summary\u2026<\/p>\n

– New programme of work for a University content management solution.
\n– Short-term plan to rebuild and retheme a small number of business- and user-critical pages in existing publishing solution.
\n– Looking at content strategy.
\n– Evolution, testing and development of our theme and patterns.
\n– Image guidelines.<\/p>\n

A lot\u2019s been happening over the summer months!<\/p>\n

Kentweb<\/h2>\n

We now have a University programme to replace our existing web publishing solution.<\/p>\n

However we definitely do not want to just buy and install a new CMS. We need a thorough reappraisal of our content strategy: what content do we need to publish, and why? Who are the key audiences? What is the governance process? Are owners and stakeholders clearly identified?<\/p>\n

This will be a significant change in how we deal with web content, and this takes time to get right. In the meantime we wanted to be able to test out some of the key ideas of our new theme, so we came up with a plan to refresh some of the key pages in our existing publishing platform.<\/p>\n

This gives us a good short-term value to the business in terms of a fresher, responsive design for a large bulk of our visits. It also allows us to test out many design patterns and content strategy approaches before we update the entire website.<\/p>\n

Short-term goals<\/h2>\n

Our key goals this summer and autumn have been to evolve our theme to allow some business-critical, user-critical pages to be built by the end of February 2017.<\/p>\n

We held a workshop with key stakeholders from areas such as Recruitment and Marketing, Research, Corporate Communications, Development Office, and International Development to identify key business messages (split into our key objectives of Research, Education, and Engagement). Tied to this we had user analytics and research we\u2019d already carried out<\/a> over the past couple of years.<\/p>\n

We identified 12 top-level pages, plus the homepage, to focus our attention on. We also decided to revamp the whole of our courses section, because this was a key area both to the business and our users.<\/p>\n

End of February 2017, priorities:<\/strong><\/p>\n