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Take Action

Update Drupal Access

Please notify Shelli Minton (sminton@ohio.edu) if anyone in your office no longer needs access to edit pages in Drupal, particularly students who have graduated. For a full list of all that have editing/publishing access to your subsite, you can reach out to Shelli.

Blackboard Site References

As OHIO moves into the latter stages of the Learning Management System (LMS) transition from Blackboard to Canvas, it is important for our web presence to reflect this change. Starting in Summer 2025, courses will no longer be automatically loaded into Blackboard, in preparation for Blackboard's complete retirement in June 2026. We have partnered with OIT to ensure that website references to Blackboard are updated in conjunction with colleges’ and departments’ Canvas adoption. We are asking site editors to check website references to Blackboard and evaluate when they should be removed or changed to Canvas, as each instance is nuanced. You can review the timeline for this transition in each college/department on OIT's website. If you are unsure whether a Blackboard reference should be updated or not, please contact your Dean's Office or departmental chair. We will send additional reminders and updated audits each semester in this newsletter.

In looking through this audit, please evaluate whether the reference to the LMS is truly necessary on the webpage at all. As a reminder, links to both Blackboard and Canvas are in the top green bar across the entire ohio.edu site, under “Quick Links.”

Review Audit of Blackboard References»

Academic Pages Content

If site managers have significant/structural changes to academic program pages, please reach out to the UCM web team before making these. UCM has a program page “template” that we’ve started implementing, and we need to ensure that URLs of program pages don’t change without our knowledge as they now feed into our www.ohio.edu/programs backend database. This data is also pulled into other pages across the site.

Program pages within the college websites are an integral marketing tool. The college program pages prioritize a consistent user experience (content template), organic SEO, and gain interest (and ultimately enrollments) for prospective students browsing OHIO's offerings. Some are also used for paid media campaigns. Do not link directly to the Academic Catalog from your college's website, except for when referencing full course/degree requirements on the program page itself. This is a "required" feature on all program pages we're working on.

Example: Degree Template

UCM’s web team has an internal plan to build out dozens of programs that do not yet have a webpage within ohio.edu. For any questions about this, please reach out to Emily Baxstrom, bartelhe@ohio.edu.

Analytics in Action

Turn Navigation Data into Strategy

Your Looker Studio Dashboard provides actionable insights into how users interact with your website's navigation. By analyzing navigation patterns, you can refine your website structure, improve user experience, and drive engagement.

Here are examples of how navigation data can lead to meaningful improvements:

Optimize High-Traffic Links

If certain navigation elements (e.g., main menu or footer links) receive significant clicks, make sure that these pages have accurate information. Consider highlighting or expanding the content on these pages as a call-to-action button on other target pages to improve accessibility and engagement.

Identify Underperforming Links

Low click rates on specific links may indicate that users find them less useful or hard to locate. This is an opportunity to revise the content, update link text, or reposition links for better visibility, including removing them from the navigation.

Reduce Link Overload

If certain navigation sections are overcrowded with links but show low engagement, simplify these areas by consolidating or removing less-used links to enhance user focus and reduce cognitive load.

Learn More About Using the Navigation Data Report»

Quick Fix

Proper Page Nesting / Page Location

One of the integral parts of websites is the relationship of pages to each other – the “information architecture” and where pages live in relation to one another. Following proper website hierarchy creates a smooth experience for users to find information they’re searching for, and also tells search engines what information to prioritize and why.

The UCM web team has found instances across ohio.edu of new pages being created in subsites without the proper “page location” - which impacts the URL and nesting of the page. It is important when creating a new webpage in your site to drill down and select the correct “Page Location” in the node editor, so that your page is not simply sitting at the root of your website (e.g., www.ohio.edu/site/new-page). Creating new webpages at the root of your site creates inaccurate/improper URLs, negatively impacts site structure, and inaccurately impacts SEO.

Example: When creating a new profile in the College of Business, you would not just create the node at ohio.edu/business/john-doe. You should find the proper drilldown under “Page Location” so that the final URL is ohio.edu/business/about/faculty-staff/john-doe.

outline of three people with speech bubbles overhead to represent a conversation

Web Editors Forum

The Web Editors Forum is a monthly meeting for all web editors, publishers, and content managers. We come together to discuss topics of interest to the group to improve our websites and the processes we use.

Next Web Editors Forum Meeting

Wed. Jan. 29 at 10:00am | Topic: Page Nesting, Breadcrumbs, and Navigation
~Bring topics or questions that you'd like to discuss with forum participants

Open Labs

Open labs are offered so that web editors can schedule focused time to work on their web pages and have assistance available. Shelli Minton, Web CMS Specialist and Training Supervisor, will be logged in to answer questions as needed.

Schedule: every Tuesday 2:00-3:00pm and every Thursday 9:00-10:00am

You can add the labs to your calendar by checking the meeting details in the forum general discussion.

Join the Web Editors Forum

What Do You Want to Talk About?

Have a web question? Looking for a shortcut? Email your quandary to us at webcontent@ohio.edu. We'll do our best to provide an answer, and maybe even share it here so everyone benefits.

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