WCMS update for June 2021

Thursday, June 24, 2021 by Andrea Jennings

Coronavirus Information

For University announcements and updates related to COVID-19, please visit the COVID-19 Information website.

What’s happening with the WCMS?

WCMS 3 information on Web Resources site

WCMS 3 migration and user information is now available on the Web Resources website!

  • Information regarding the migration process, as well as how to request a WCMS 3 site
    • WCMS 3 site request intake web forms will be open on June 29, with those links shared via a campus-wide communication
    • The web form will automatically create a corresponding RT, where all further communications about your migration will occur
  • A list of the functionality from standard WCMS 2 FDSU sites that will and won't ship with the June 29 initial release of WCMS 3 is also a helpful resource to review often

WCMS 2 site information

Deadline for launching WCMS 2 sites on pilots

All WCMS 2 FDSU pilots sites must be launched/moved to production by Tuesday, August 31, 2021. This does not impact sites using single page, publication or conference templates.

If a site is not ready to move to production at that time, the site may:

  • Be culled (deleted), with recommendation for the site owner to recreate the site in the WCMS 3 staging area

Requests to keep WCMS 2 sites on pilots after August 31 should be sent to Joe Kwan. Requests will be reviewed on a per-site basis; there is no guarantee an exclusion will be granted.

Creating new WCMS 2 sites

WCMS 2 FDSU sites will no longer be built as of June 29, 2021. Site maintainers requiring a new WCMS site will need to build the site in the new WCMS 3 environment.

Site requests for single page, publication or conference templates will continue to be supported until the functionality is available in WCMS 3.

WCMS 3.0 updates

IST co-op training/early rebuild opportunities on beta sites

Are you interested in having a co-op student rebuild an existing WCMS 2 site in WCMS 3? We would like to continue to identify "simple" WCMS 2 sites that the co-ops can use as examples to get more hands-on experience with WCMS 3. "Simple" sites in this case would constitute sites:

  • That are stock "FDSU" theme in WCMS 2, with no custom modules installed and are not behind authentication; and
  • That have 10 pages or less in total

The site owner can submit sites that fit our criteria for a "simple" site. If you would like to submit a site for this exercise, please submit an RT (rt-ist-wcms@rt.uwaterloo.ca) with:

  • A subject line of "WCMS 3 IST co-op site submission"
  • The site name
  • The site URL

Sites completed during this exercise could launch to production after June 29 with site owner approval. We will assign sites to our co-ops on a first-come, first-serve basis according to requests in RT.

If you have any questions at all feel free to message Andrea Jennings.

Drop-in lab

Have a question, or need some help with your website? A virtual Drop-in lab will be open every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon from 1-4 p.m. to provide WCMS content maintainers one-on-one website and training support. Please reach out to Charlotte Armstrong, via email or Microsoft Teams, to schedule an appointment.

Who’s new to the WCMS…

6 more sites have launched in the Waterloo Content Management System (WCMS) since our last update.

New on Web Resources

Current development sprint:

Previous development sprints:

From the blog:

Topics: 
WCMS updates