The Latest Dirt - September 2024
Our Website in Transition
By Lori Palmquist
Our wonderful website, which has been the hub of extraordinarily useful garden wisdom, will change radically by the end of 2024. UCANR is updating its look and functionality and moving its 521 websites to a more modern, secure, and reliable platform called Drupal.
This move has the Communications project working hard to make the process go as smoothly as possible. On August 14th, I sent an email through VMS to all UC Master Gardeners of Contra Costa County asking for help with the many tasks we’re being asked to perform to prepare our site for the changeover. Close to 20 CoCoMGs responded by clicking some of the links in the email or by responding and offering their assistance. That was really wonderful.
The website transition team includes Hedwig Van Den Broeck, Robin Mitchell, and me. We’ve met several times with the designated UCANR IT person, Stephen Dampier, who has made himself handily available through direct email and Zoom to answer our questions.
ANR describes this monumental change as a “migration to an Integrated Web Platform (IWP).” Our current platform is Site Builder, and all the ANR websites have been using it for 15+ years. Our website was created in mid-2010. Migration means that content will be exported from Site Builder and become available in Drupal. The goal is to migrate existing, relevant content to Drupal while avoiding migration of irrelevant, outdated, duplicate, and unused content, images, and files.
The New Look
The new look is significantly different from our existing website. Even though Stephen assures us that our web pages will be moved to the new platform intact, we don’t know how that will play out. For instance, Terri Takusagawa expressed concern that there will no longer be a prominent advertisement for obtaining an Ask a Master Gardener table at public events. The new home page appears to have “cards” with general topics labeling them that you have to click to go to other web pages to get more information. See below an example website home page. ANR’s main website has already been migrated and presents us with an example of what ours could look and function like.
https://ucanr.edu/
As you can see in the above screenshot, the home page has an entirely different look and structure than our existing site. Our primary concern is the amount of control we’ll have over the topics displayed on the home page and how the organization and navigation of the site will play out. Stephen tells us that a UCANR department called “Strategic Communications” is responsible for this.
So, regarding Terri’s question as to whether we’ll be able to clearly and prominently offer our wonderful services on the home page, the answer is that we have to wait and see. I get the sense from Stephen that moving Site Builder content over to Drupal is like jamming a square peg into a round hole. His frustration with the process and the challenges it presents to all is palpable. However, he is confident that the new platform will be more stable, secure, and logical. The software is open source, solid, and supported by a huge global community of developers and programmers. The Site Builder platform is the opposite in almost every way.
In case you’re curious, the following is a link to a web page with the tasks we’ve been given to prepare for the migration. Even though the task list is quite daunting, it’s comforting to know that ANR is not demanding that everything be completed by December when the migration is scheduled. They tell us that we need our preferred web pages in place and activated when the migration happens. We’re resolved to chipping away at the tasks as best we can. But it’s not at a “hair-on-fire” pace.
Want to Help?
If you’re interested in helping with the transition and haven’t already, feel free to contact Robin, Hedwig, or me. Any and all help will be greatly appreciated.
Robin Mitchell: eccommunitygarden@gmail.com
Lori Palmquist: loripalmquist@gmail.com
Hedwig Van Den Broeck: hedwigvdb@gmail.com