Plan First, Then Revise, Then Build

As we said in Step 5 – Learn CMS Sunflower and Plan Your Pages, before you start building pages it is important that you take the time to get comfortable using KU CMS Sunflower and plan your pages so you know what end results you are aiming for. If your planning is complete, then you are ready to start building your new site.

Accessibility

As a public institution in the State of Kansas, all KU websites are required to comply with the State of Kansas Web Accessibility Requirements. KU website administrators should ensure that every page on their sites meet the guidelines.

Before you begin building your pages, review all Accessibility Guidelines and best practices so you are prepared to implement them as you build your pages.

Organizing Your Site Menu

One of the most significant changes in KU CMS Sunflower is the new menu system. Strategic design of your menu system and creating the needed parent/child relationships is an essential aspect of your site building process and requires. Before you begin your site build, please see Menu/Navigation for information, including guidelines and best practices.

Tracking Page Creation

As with the site map and content review process, we recommend using a spreadsheet to track the pages you are building for site as they are created, revised, finalized and approved.

• Start with a spreadsheet of all the planned pages on your new KU CMS Sunflower site
• Develop and plan your new site map, so you can move quickly when establishing your site menu
• Plan your page titles, URLs, and H1s in advance before you create the page.
• We recommended keeping track of:
  • Who created the page and when
  • Who reviewed it
  • If and when it was approved

Links to Drupal 7 Site

Once your KU CMS Sunflower site goes-live, your previous Drupal 7 site will no longer be findable on the internet. That means links to any pages you do not migrate to your new site and all hosted images and documents will stop working. To avoid broken links and missing content, be sure to manually migrate all image and document resources to your new site.

NOTE: Do not migrate inaccessible documents/PDFs to your new site. All documents/PDFs hosted on your CMS site must be accessible. See Documents.

Migrate the Same URLs or Create a Redirect

When you are migrating pages, be sure to use the same URL whenever possible. Keeping the same URL will ensure that those links do not break on other sites, bookmarks, or in print documents.

If you do need to change the URL, just remember to create a redirect on your new site. A redirect will allow you to change the URL and ensure that users find the correct page on your new site.

Checking Redirects on Your Drupal 7 Site

Be sure to review the redirects on your Drupal 7 site. You may need to recreate some redirects on your new CMS Sunflower site to ensure that end-users arrive at correct destinations on your new site. This likely applies only to the pages on your site that get the most traffic – and are most likely to have been bookmarked or linked to from other websites.

If someone has bookmarked or linked a page on your Drupal 7 site and you recreate that page on your CMS Sunflower site with the exact same URL, users will end up on the correct page and no additional redirect action is required.

However, imagine a scenario where one of your most heavily-trafficked pages has had a URL change in the recent past. For example, if you originally created a page with the URL “/about-us” and then sometime later came back and updated the URL to be simply “/about.” If someone bookmarked or linked to “/about-us,” once your new site goes live they will no longer arrive at the correct destination because that page does not exist on your new site. You can correct for this by adding a redirect.

Help While Building Your Site

• CMS Training Workshops are provided regularly. Please register in advance. See Workshops Calendar for information including registration.
• For general assistance and site migration, contact KU Web Services at webservices@ku.edu
• For assistance with web writing, site organization, section selection and user experience, contact our User Interface/User Experience Team at uiux@ku.edu