Author: Liz Vines
What fantastic turnout we had for our first ever 'virtual' Digital Commons 2.0 event! Over 80 of you joined to hear more about our migration to Drupal 8, a demo of the landing page content type, and lots more.
New Digital Solutions Director
Participants had an opportunity to meet our new Digital Solutions Director, Jess Matthews and to hear about her vision for moving forward. Jess is a former Chief Content Officer for the City of New York, serving more than 200 city agencies from the FDNY to New York City Schools and the Health Department. She let digital operations for two different presidential campaigns before joining us. She is a proud North Carolinian with a passion for civic tech as a means toward equality.
What's Going On With the Migration?
At this point we have migrated nine sites and supported the build of two brand new Drupal 8 sites! Project Manager Marla Laubisch gave an update on where we are and where we're headed. We are about 15% of the way in!
Your Agency's Role in Migration
Imogen Hoyle, DNCR Web Manager, presented on the agency role and responsibilities for the upcoming Drupal 8 migration. She walked us through all of the steps needed to get your sites ready for migration and then ready for public consumption! See the PDF below for details. Outlined below are pre-migration duties and post-migration tasks:
Pre-Migration
Clean-up and organize your current site (A topic we introduced in late 2019)
Get your site ready for migration
Post-Migration Cleanup
Get trained in Drupal 8
Scour your new content for anomalies
Create Landing Pages in ONE Place!
We had the opportunity to see a demo of how Landing Pages work in Drupal 8. Most notable is that you no longer have to create your blocks/cards in a separate space! Yes, you are now able to build your entire Landing Page all at one time, in on place.
NC COVID19 Information Hub
Lois Nilsen presented on how a cross-agency team came together to create COVID19.NC.gov! Collaboration pays off! The group was able to divide and conquer with the content that should be on the site, chasing down information sources and utilizing Analytics and SEO to determine site effectiveness,
The Power of Analytics
How many people visit your site weekly? Which devices are users accessing your site with? Which of your web pages are people landing on first? These and more questions can easily be answered by utilizing Google Analytics! We were reintroduced to this free tool that is available for every website on the platform. It's primary use if to help you understand your website audience, their needs and to help you make data-driven decision to improve site organization. Google also offers Data Studio as a means of digging even deeper into the data of your website.
Interested in learning more? We offer a Google Analytics course. Contact Elena Talanker for dates.
Creating Accessible Content