Blog
The UIT Blog is a behind-the-scenes look at the build and delivery of technology products and services to the Stanford community. The topics you’ll read about are all told first-hand by the individuals who work closest to them.
UHR Slack Channel Honors Spirit of Former Co-Worker
March 3, 2020
The University Human Resources (UHR) team has found a unique way to use Slack to continue the cherished practices of a beloved co-worker after her unexpected death.
Engaging Remote and Distributed Colleagues in Slack
February 20, 2020
When it comes to Slack, one thing is true. It doesn’t matter where you’re located physically; everyone “talks” in the same place. This benefits the whole community, but it’s especially important for those of us who are part of Stanford’s ever-growing remote and distributed workforce.
Seven Steps for a Successful Transition to Drupal 8
February 20, 2020
This month, our team will introduce the Stanford Sites Drupal 8 (D8) beta, and we want to help you to begin thinking about your plan to rebuild and launch your website on the new platform. We’ve put together a guide to walk you through every step in the process.
Join New Workspaces (How to Do It and Why You Want To)
January 24, 2020
As Stanford Slack grows, more groups who share information with the Stanford community through websites, newsletters, and emails may also begin posting news in Slack. And you may discover that getting campus news in Slack lets you focus on what’s most interesting or relevant to you.
Stanford Slack: Looking Back and Moving Forward
December 17, 2019
Stanford Slack recently marked its official second anniversary. And there’s a lot to celebrate. Two years into the journey, the platform has grown exponentially in ways we never anticipated. Today, more than 13,500 members of the Stanford community use Slack weekly. Of those users, almost three-quarters use the tool every day. Cumulatively, we now measure the messages we’ve sent and the files we’ve shared via Slack not in millions, but tens of millions. Amazing, isn’t it?
Why Perform a Content Audit on Your Website?
December 16, 2019
To help prepare your Drupal website for the move to the Drupal 8 (D8) platform, Stanford Web Services (SWS) is building a D8 Adoption Toolkit that will be available to Jumpstart and Stanford Sites users in early 2020. Among the D8 adoption resources, you’ll find an audit tool that we can install directly on your site. It will give you a “live” view of inventory of your site content and allow you to mark each piece of content with a status.
Five Takeaways From the Drupal 8 Pilot
December 3, 2019
After a massive amount of effort, our team pulled off a successful pilot release of the Drupal 8 (D8) platform. This involved developing a plan for research, internal testing and QA, and hands-on user interview sessions. During the sessions, we observed clients using the platform and solicited their invaluable feedback to understand what was currently working well and/or not so well.
Introducing the New Stanford Mobile App
October 28, 2019
Today’s release of Stanford Mobile was the first with a sole focus on improving the student experience. Through newly established campus-wide partnerships — including those with students — we learned what enhancements to the existing implementation would be most beneficial to the home screen’s layout, function, and content strategy.
Why Web Accessibility Matters
October 25, 2019
When you sit down to use your computer, what do you do and experience? Likely, without too much effort, you see the screen with your eyes, listen to videos with your ears, and comprehend the content with your brain. You interact with components on the screen by clicking a mouse, tapping a keyboard or screen, and ultimately, you understand the information that gets back to you — or at least that’s the goal.
The Road to D8: What will be available and when?
October 2, 2019
Imagine building a whole new Drupal framework in one year, while considering the many unique website needs Stanford Sites users have cultivated over the past seven. That’s the challenge we are tackling. So what does releasing D8 for Stanford Sites look like? It looks like a whole lot of building and testing, followed by a series of iterative feature and version releases, along with regular security patches and upgrades, in true Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) fashion.
