By Nina Hermansen and Stig Andersen
Good things are worth waiting for! A new CMS (Umbraco) is currently being rolled out to all external AAU websites, including all department websites. Several units have migrated to Umbraco, and you have probably come across the new design at least once or twice these last months.
Our department is in the final spurt, hoping to launch the new CS website in English and Danish in February 2023.
Why change from Infoglue?
The current system, Infoglue, is outdated, and as no community is connected to this platform, ITS has struggled to keep the system working. Furthermore, the functionalities in Infoglue are designed for something other than the mobile world, which is a real problem as more than 50 per cent of visits to AAU's sites come from mobile phone users.
Umbraco is an open-source content management system (CMS) platform, which, functionality-wise, is quite different from what we have now on the Infoglue platform. Umbraco is a headless CMS with a stronger focus on user-friendliness, designed to be modern and organic.
If you want to know more about the development process, the Head of the UX Team at AAU, Bo Hvass Pedersen, presented the thoughts behind the choice at a meeting in 2021.
In the communication team, we are currently building the new CS sites incl. the individual research group/team "sites" (DEIS, DESS, DKW, HCC, AI-ML). New photos have been taken, and texts are being updated and translated at this very moment.
We have prioritised launching a Danish version of our website along with the English one. The reason for this is to make our department just a bit more accessible to students and journalists. Danish journalists google in Danish - and students should be able to find information about rules etc., in Danish as well. This is not either/or, and it's both. Equally, it will serve to boost SEO (Search Engine Optimization) in general.
With regard to the intranet, ITS has yet to announce a date for the roll-out of internal AAU sites. However, we assume the intranet will also be migrated to the new system in 2023.
We look forward to showing you the new CS websites and are happy to receive feedback and inputs once the website is launched.
By way of example, you may want to check out some of the websites that have already migrated to Umbraco:
build.aau.dk, tech.aau.dk and es.dk.