March 6, 2026

Greetings site managers,

After a short hiatus, the newsletter is back! In this month's newsletter, we're announcing new features for managing Shared Content, highlighting some key accessibility practices, and offering a quick reminder about updating faculty/staff profiles. 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

Where is it? In the "Shared Content" tab of your Drupal dashboard.

What does it do? The "Refresh Feeds" button updates your Shared Content feed. When used, it updates the list of shared content available for you to import, pulling in any new/updated shared content that wasn't previously in your feed. Expect this process to take approximately 3-5 minutes.

When might you use it? The Shared Content feed automatically updates to show new and updated shared content at various times throughout the day. But if you're looking to import a recently published webpage and you can't locate it in your feed, you can run "Refresh Feeds" to make it appear.

Where is it? This is also in the "Shared Content" tab of your Drupal dashboard.

What does it do? The "Sync Content" button updates all of the imported webpages on your website to reflect any changes that have been made to the originals. It also removes any shared content that has been deleted or is no longer available.

When might you use it? If you are aware of multiple instances of imported content on your website being out-of-date -- that aren't reflecting edits made to the original content -- you can click "Sync Content" to update them all simultaneously.

Where is it? In the Drupal editor for individual webpages -- specifically, for individual webpages that have been imported from other A&S websites. Within the page editor, you can find it in the horizontal menu at the top of the page (see above image).

What does it do? "Force Refresh" is a tool for instantly updating individual pieces of Shared Content that have been imported to your website.

When might you use it? "Force Refresh" works similarly to "Sync Content," but is much more targeted -- it is for updating a single piece of imported content on your website. So, if you come across an outdated piece of imported content, you can quickly open its Drupal editor and use "Force Refresh" to instantly bring it up-to-date.

Flyers can be a great promotional tool for events. They work well when strategically hung in physical spaces on campus -- and they can also be effective social media content. But that doesn't mean that flyers are appropriate in all promotional contexts.

In fact, when used on Drupal event pages, they can do more harm than good. That's because digital flyers feature text in image form. When important textual information is embedded in an image file, here are a couple things that go wrong:

By simply going through the process of creating the flyer, you've already gathered great content for the event page. You simply need to take that content from the flyer and slot it into the proper field on the Drupal event page. Here are some general suggestions for making those adaptations:

If you're interested in more strategies related to this topic, be sure to check out the "Images with Text & Flyers" page that our Web Team assembled in the Web Guide.

The WashU Sites support team recently sent along a message promoting the importance of accessible web design: "Accessibility ensures that information is accessible to everyone and provides equal access to all users, including those with disabilities."

Towards that end, they included a checklist of "high-impact items" that "often account for the majority of accessibility barriers." Here are a few that y'all should look out for as A&S site managers:

If you want to learn more about how you can ensure that information on your website is accessible to everyone, our Web Team has assembled accessibility resources specifically tailored to your experience in Drupal. If web accessibility is a new topic for you, I recommend starting with their "Manual Accessibility Testing" resource.

As I've previously mentioned in these newsletters, faculty/staff profiles make up a significant portion of our web traffic. In February, they accounted for 25% of all page views on the main ArtSci website. So, it's important to make sure that these pages stay up-to-date! When you have time, work with your department/program to determine:

While you work on this, you might keep the Web Guide resource on hand!

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.