As many of our web editors are aware, the Communications/Marketing and ITS departments are leading a project to migrate the UNBC website to a newer version of our content management system, Drupal. We are required to move away from our current version of Drupal by November 2021, as it will no longer be supported (we have been on our current version of Drupal for eight+ years now). As a result, we have been proactively planning for this project for a couple of years, and the Communications/Marketing and ITS teams have done significant work in the background as part of the first phase of work.

To help us prepare for the next phase, which is migrating all web content to the new version of Drupal, we are asking all of our web editors throughout the University to audit the web content they are responsible for updating. We are doing this because we don’t want to simply transport everything that exists on the website now to the new version. We should take a look at the content and ensure that everything is reasonably up to date and relevant to our varied audiences. 

We have implemented a web governance tool at UNBC called Siteimprove to assist in this process. Siteimprove is a cloud-based software tool that helps facilitate the content auditing process. As a web editor for the UNBC website, you will be learning how to use our web governance software, Siteimprove, in conjunction with Drupal. 

Siteimprove Reporting Features

Each month you will receive an automated report that generates a Digital Certainty Index that measures the overall quality of the web pages in your section of the website. These reports will allow you to easily identify the following types of errors:

• Spelling mistakes
• Broken links in web pages and PDFs
• Broken image references

At the web administrator level, Siteimprove helps us maintain the website by finding content that should be updated or removed from the website, such as:

• Outdated contact information
• Personal ID numbers
• Site-wide department and employee name changes or removals
• Outdated documents
• Links to unsafe/malicious websites

From a more technical standpoint, some examples of how the web team uses Siteimprove are as follows:

• Identifying web accessibility issues for users with disabilities
• Search engine optimization
• Ensuring cross-browser and device compatibility

It’s important to recognize that we are not asking everybody to go through and conduct a thorough refresh of their websites. That is another process that we will be able to help with in the future. Rather, we hope people will take time to correct spelling errors, fix or remove broken links, delete content that is no longer relevant, and so on.

Sign in to Siteimprove

To sign in to Siteimprove, please visit the Siteimprove Sign-in page and sign in using your UNBC user ID and password. When you first sign in you won’t be assigned to a section right away. Please allow up to 2 days to view your reports as we have to assign you to your sections manually.

Siteimprove Training

To be successful, you will want to take approximately two to three hours of time to complete the training to learn how to use Siteimprove. Our web team will be available for support throughout the content auditing process. Our goal is to have this phase of the content auditing process completed by all web editors by July 31, 2020.

Please read through the Siteimprove training materials page and watch the Siteimprove Fundamentals on-demand webinar. Optionally, you can also watch the Siteimprove Accessibility 101 on-demand webinar to gain a greater understanding of how to improve the accessibility of your web pages for users with disabilities.

Once you have finished reviewing this content, please email lindsay.hastey@unbc.ca to confirm you have completed the training. Please feel free to include any feedback you have on the training materials or any questions you have about using Siteimprove.

We are looking forward to getting you going with Siteimprove; we are sure you will find this tool to be very helpful with maintaining your content on the UNBC website.

Thank you for your support in this project!