August 11, 2025

Greetings Site Managers,

With the fall semester rapidly approaching, it's time to fall back into old routines. Yes, it's time to start promoting events and faculty book projects. It's also time to review some key SiteImprove policies. Read on for details, and, as always, please don't hesitate to reach out with any questions about these newsletter topics!

Best,

KJ Schaeffner

Web Content Specialist

Arts & Sciences | Marketing & Communications

Depending on the content and the audience of an event, it may be smart to promote it on:

In all three of those listed cases, you need to add your event to Drupal's shared content feed. Once your event is added to the shared content feed, site managers of all A&S websites have the ability to import it to their website. To add your event to the shared content feed:

Once your event is in the shared content feed, it does not automatically get added to the relevant program calendars that you want to cross-promote it on -- those site managers will need to actively choose to import it. So, it's a good idea to notify them once it's in the feed and ask them if they can import it.

Important Note: Drupal has a built-in tool for notifying other departments and programs in A&S about your shared content. Right underneath the "Is Shared Content" toggle, there is a field called "Email Notifications" where, under normal circumstances, you would select the program you wanted to notify. Currently, however, the built-in "Email Notifications" tool is not working. So, you'll need to send an email outside of Drupal to notify the relevant program/department. To determine who you should contact in that program, you can find a list of primary website contacts on the A&S IT website. 

I routinely review the shared content feed and import events from around Arts & Sciences to the main A&S event calendar. If your event hasn't been imported to the calendar, you can send me an email (schaeffner@wustl.edu) and I'd be happy to review the event and we can discuss whether or not it makes sense to promote it there.

In order for your event to be added to the university-wide Happenings calendar, it should first be added to the main A&S event calendar. Once an event is added to the main A&S calendar, it is automatically sent over to University Marketing & Communications (UMC). At that point, the folks over at UMC can review it and import it to the Happenings calendar.

So, whenever you have an event that you want promoted on Happenings, here's what you need to do:

Per previous communications from the Dean’s Office, the deadline for the second round of Workday Student-related website edits is September 15th, 2025. Please review that communication and ensure that your website has enacted the requested updates. There is a policy in your SiteImprove dashboard that will help you uncover areas of your website that need attention.

In the last newsletter, I mentioned that the entity formerly known as the "Career Center" had undergone some changes:

Why do you need to know this? Well, most A&S websites have language about the "Career Center" along with links to it. So, the web team and I worked to set up a quick policy in SiteImprove to help y'all track down this now-outdated information. When you log in to SiteImprove, you'll find a new policy towards the bottom of the page titled, "Career Center Name and URL Change." This policy will list all instances of the outdated links to the center's website. When working through the policy, just make sure to update both the center's name and the center's url.

It's not just you. I can feel myself becoming an annoying broken record, but I'll say it again - faculty page views make up a substantial portion of our total website traffic. On the main A&S website, 25% of all pages views are of faculty bios. Keeping those profiles up-to-date helps our audiences engage with their important research.

To that end, the fall semester is a good time to check-in with faculty and see if they have new book projects that need to be promoted on the website. When creating a new book, just make sure that you:

Web content question? Content sharing question? Reach out to me, KJ Schaeffner, at schaeffner@wustl.edu.

Technical issue with your website? Reach out to the A&S Web Team at artsci-webteam@wustl.edu.

Inside ArtSci question? Logo question? Reach out to Simone Becque at sbecque@wustl.edu.

Social media question? Reach out to Gennie Avellino at avellino@wustl.edu.

To help support the work of web admins, I will be available for office hours every Wednesday from 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM. If you have any questions or concerns about web content, please don't hesitate to drop-by! No rsvp or appointment necessary. You can find the re-occuring Zoom link in the Box document linked below.