Category: Web Services

Fresh, Accessible, and Flexible: UF’s New Web Templates

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UF Information Technology (UFIT) collaborated with the Office of Strategic Communications and Marketing (SCM) to launch the new UF web theme in September 2023. The theme, known as Mercury, features modular and component-based templates, creating a modernized look aligned with UF’s branding strategy and accessibility policy. The components of each template are flexible, allowing users to easily adopt the theme.

This project began in June 2021 with UF partnering with the vendor Stamats. UFIT’s Web Services team serves as SCM’s technical support and worked with them on the web refresh efforts. The new template reflects three years of planning, cooperation, and building out the new look.

“Since the release of the Mercury theme, we’ve already seen several units successfully implement it,” SCM’s Director of Marketing and Web Strategy Ana Mertz said. “It is exciting to see so many units embrace the new templates. Our teams worked hard to ensure our campus community had as many resources as possible to facilitate adoption.”

While implementation of the templates is not required for campus units, it’s highly encouraged as the Mercury theme provides brand continuity and meets current accessibility standards.

“Based on the requests for meetings to discuss migrating into the new theme, I am optimistic that campus wide adoption is forthcoming,” UFIT Associate Director and Manager of Web Services Kimbley Standifer said.

Visit the UF Brand Center’s ‘Website Templates’ page to find information about the template, available platforms, and the required documentation to use them. If you have any questions, please fill out the contact form at the bottom of the page. UFIT also has additional resources about using the new template available on https://webservices.it.ufl.edu/mercury-theme/.

Free Training on Administrative and AI Applications

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UF Information Technology (UFIT) offers a robust training calendar that includes instructor-led opportunities and self-paced courses. All UFIT training is free and open to faculty, staff, and students. There are dozens of offerings this semester including the options listed below.

Enhance Your collaboration skills with these instructor-led webinars:

Earn UFIT’s AI Foundations certificate with this anytime, on-demand option:

AI Foundations Certificate Program: Learn different aspects of AI through a series of five courses: Artificial Intelligence in The Workplace, Harnessing AI Tools, AI Image Generators (Self-Paced), and Prompt Engineering: Working with ChatGPT and AI Image Generators.

Become proficient with survey tools for research and administrative use:

Register today and let’s learn together! UFIT can also deliver on-site, custom learning opportunities for a college, department, or unit that has a specific group training need. Email ufit-training@ufl.edu with your inquiry. The training staff are eager to help you more efficiently use campus IT tools and applications.

Learn to Navigate UF’s New T4 Web Template

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The University of Florida employs TERMINALFOUR (T4) as the campus’s central content management system for website hosting. UFIT collaborated with the Office of Strategic Communications and Marketing and a vendor (Stamats) to create UF’s new template. The template is called the Mercury Theme and aligns with the refreshed UF branding effort, providing a modernized look and feel for UF’s web environment. Colleges, administrative units, and academic and research centers are encouraged to adopt the new template for their website.

UFIT is sponsoring a T4 training for power users to assist campus web managers with the new Mercury Theme template. Register for this two-hour class through myTraining. Seating is limited so interested staff are encouraged to register ASAP:

Date:  Thursday, Oct. 19

Time:  1:00 – 3:00 p.m.

Location:  Weil Hall 408-A

More information about the new T4 theme is available on: https://webservices.it.ufl.edu/mercury-theme/about/. Anyone with questions about this class is welcome to contact the UFIT Training team.

New Templates for UFL.EDU Available

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UFIT collaborated with the Office of Strategic Communications and Marketing (SCM) and their agency partner to update the UF web presence. A working group from SCM and UFIT have built flexible, modular website templates with the goal of making them accessible in multiple formats to colleges, departments, centers, institutes, and other administrative units.

The new templates are now available for use. Templates can be accessed several ways:
• Direct access to base code stack (HTML, CSS, JS)
• Terminalfour
• WordPress (WordPress Multisite and WordPress Single Site options)

Visit the ‘Website Templates’ page of the Brand Center to get started. You will find information about the different ways the templates can be accessed as well as the required documentation to use them. If you have any questions, please fill out the contact form on the bottom of the page.

Note: For UF Health entities, including the health colleges, centers and institutes, refer to the UF Health Web Services website for available web templates and resources.

Learn to Use the Campus-Wide Calendar

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UF’s Office of Strategic Communications and Marketing (SCM) manages the campus-wide calendar. The URL is https://calendar.ufl.edu/ and available as a direct-link on the UF homepage. The calendar is a great promotional option available for departments and organizations to broadly advertise events.

Free training is being offered so faculty and staff can learn to manage event submissions, request a departmental calendar, and leverage all the features of the calendaring tool. The live, instructor-led webinar training will be held on:

Wednesday, Oct. 5, from 2:00-3:00 p.m.
Course Number: UF_ITT369_ILT
Register here

The university’s calendar provides a central system where events can be submitted for inclusion to maximize exposure. (Events will be reviewed for approval every one to two weeks by SCM.) Visit https://ufl.lwcal.com/submit/ to request an event be added. For questions about this training, please contact the UFIT Training team.

Rebranding of the UF Homepage

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UFIT enabled the Office of Strategic Communications & Marketing (SCM) to lift the University of Florida’s web presence. The full rebranding of the top-level domain (i.e., the UF homepage), referred to as Tier 1 of the project, went live on April 11. SCM initiated the www.ufl.edu redesign project with the agency Stamats and UFIT in June 2021.

“UFIT’s leadership and staff were instrumental in providing technical insights and support for a successful site migration for UF,” said Ana Perez-Olave, associate director of digital marketing. “The collaboration between our two offices was very fruitful, and SCM looks forward to the continued partnership with UFIT throughout the Tier 2 (templates for colleges) and Tier 3 (templates for departments, centers, and business units) phases of the project.”

Approximately 22 members of UFIT are involved in the project, including web developers and designers, along with infrastructure staff involved in load testing and managing the web servers.  While continuing to support clients in TERMINALFOUR, Web Services staff adjusted their techniques and learned new skills to prepare the required infrastructure.  To date, staff have logged more than 4,000 hours to the project. As soon as Tier 1 went live, UFIT focused development energies on the Tier 2 and Tier 3 project deliverables. Anyone needing support with their T4 environment, T4 training, or who has a question about web standards, may use the https://webservices.it.ufl.edu/contact/ form.

Accessibility Tools and Training for Campus

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UFIT provides numerous services to enable compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act as well as all other applicable federal and state regulations. Among the available services are
Site Improve access, which checks current website content for accessibility issues, and the SensusAccess document conversion tool. UFIT also has two web and content accessibility training opportunities:

Accessibility Basics, an easy to follow, free, online self-paced video course is designed for staff. The Accessibility Basics training takes approximately two hours and provides instruction on how to create accessible documents (e.g., Word, images, .PDFs) and website content.

Accessibility Fundamentals, created for an instructor audience, is also a free, self-paced online training. Accessibility Fundamentals shows how to design accessible online course materials. The course covers different types of accessibility needs and suggestions for making an online course more accessible.

UFIT is here to help instructors and staff who post online content!  Visit UFIT’s digital standards and website recommendations page for additional compliance tips and resources.

Introducing UF’s Link Shortener Service

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Faculty and staff can now utilize https://go.ufl.edu/, the University of Florida’s new URL shortener service. UFIT developed the service for use within the UF digital ecosphere, such as online documentation, emails, websites and blogs, and in social media posts.

The UF link shortener can only be used with designated UF-owned web pages: those ending in “ufl.edu” and “ufhealth.org,” and pages inside UF’s Zoom, Qualtrics, SharePoint, Gator360, and ExLibris environments. Using go.ufl.edu creates a more secure web environment for UF than a commercial link shortener that restricts which URLs can be shortened.  The https://go.ufl.edu service reduces the risk of spoofed websites and other harmful links entering the UF network. Even with the reduction in spoofed websites and other online dangers, go.ufl.edu users should still employ reasonable safeguards when clicking on links.

More information is available on https://it.ufl.edu/services/goufledu.

Training Available for Setting Up T4 Website

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Looking for best practices to help you with TERMINALFOUR (T4) site setup? UFIT developed self-guided training that campus power users can refer to whenever they need to refresh their skills: Best Practices for T4 Site Set Up.

The Best Practices training explains how to stand up a T4 site using the official UF template. This training is designed to give power users a deeper understanding of the TERMINALFOUR environment components, including page layouts, page content, and site configuration. It also enables viewers to become familiar with UF digital standards for the web and how to apply best practices for managing their website in TERMINALFOUR. A prerequisite for taking Best Practices is to have completed the Web Developer (Technical) UF_ITT332_CUR training. Visit the Getting Started with T4 to learn more, including what ARS security roles are needed to manage content in UF’s T4 environment.

UFIT has several online and instructor-led TERMINALFOUR trainings available, including one focused on managing the ‘contributor’ and ‘moderator’ roles. Visit UF’s myTraining site and search on “T4” to see a list of T4 offerings. Anyone with questions about T4 training or maintaining your site is welcome to email webmaster@ufl.edu for assistance.

Sharing UF’s AI Journey with the World

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Enhancements to UF’s https://ai.ufl.edu/ website (AI) debuted on January 26. The site now more fully showcases UF’s commitment to integrate AI across academic, research, and outreach efforts. The Office of Strategic Communications and Marketing partnered with UFIT’s Web Services to bring about the site enhancements.

“The story we want to share digitally is one that encompasses all aspects of AI at UF,” notes Melanie Schramm, assistant vice president for strategic communications. “UF’s AI Initiative touches on every aspect of the university. Working with UFIT, this site will help us share information and discoveries with stakeholders around the world.”

The new design features a restructured homepage with content blocks dedicated to university-wide research and announcements. Two new tabs have been added: the Industry tab details UF’s investments in solidifying its role as the first “AI University,” while the News tab lists updates and events from departments and units. Students can also check out the chart on the Academics tab that lists all new and enhanced undergraduate and graduate courses that include AI components. The popular Calendar link lists the symposia, trainings, webinars, and other events focusing on AI across the enterprise. UF Human Resources also has a Jobs page dedicated solely to the AI-focused faculty and staff positions available with the university.