At a very high level, the process of migrating to the NDSU 2018 template involves changing the template (what defines the visual appearance of the content records that make up a page) to the "NDSU 2018" template and then making content changes desired to make use of the new template features as desired.
First, let's make sure we have a mutual understanding about a few key concepts.
Department web page here means a top-level directory and everything below. For example, www.ndsu.edu/its and all subdirectories or www.ndsu.edu/eci and all subdirectories. Sometimes the top-level directory isn't actually a university department, but rather a "parent unit" or even a program within a department, but we're still talking about a top-level directory and everything below even in that case. We say "department" because often the top-level directories are divided in that fashion.
Migration occurs for an entire department web page. Even if a university department is arranged as a sub-directory of a parent unit in the web hierarchy, such as Student Technology Services ( www.ndsu.edu/its/sts/ ), either all of www.ndsu.edu/its would need to change to the new template or none of /its would change. If a top-level directory contains web content for multiple university departments, then all must update together; conversely, if a directory is only a partial university department, then the migration only impacts that partial department www.ndsu.edu/partialdept and below.
Ready to switch to the NDSU 2018 template?
When you switch, you should be ready to dedicate effort to migrate to the new template. You should have authors ready to review the page and make any immediate changes desired.
In practice, the migration steps look approximately like the following:
- A workspace manager submits a template change request.
- Publish (or discard) any pending draft changes in the workspace while you're waiting for the template change to be applied, particularly if opting for template changes only in the draft workspace. This step isn't required, but can help you focus on what content changes you're making solely as a consequence of changing templates once it comes time to publish the template.
- A CMS administrator will change the template to NDSU 2018 and set a page layout that is useful for migration: it displays page navigation arranged on the left side, much like the "old" template, and displays any content records in the BORDER column in line after the MAIN column contents so that visitors can still reach that content and so that you can move the content to the MAIN column if desired. You will be provided with a "report" listing pages with any BORDER contents so you can easily find such pages.
- If there are BORDER content elements that should display with a column-like layout, you can use the Grid Container content elements to re-arrange using that visual layout for large screens. Keep in mind that the contents are still presented linearly on small screens and accessibility tools (just as it was on the "old" template). If the page doesn't make sense when linearized this way, you should re-organize contents so that it will make sense.
- If the page navigation is long, reorganize pages to keep a horizontally-oriented navigation bar from overflowing to multiple lines. You can switch the template layout to use a horizontal navigation option when ready.
- Content records containing tables may warrant updates. Note the available table styles.
The template is already published and you should be publishing the contents as usual as you make changes. There's no need to contact the Help Desk.
- Maintain the site (such as making further improvements and additions to the pages) as you did under the "old" NDSU 2011 template—save and publish as usual.