UA has recently released it's Web Resources Accessibility policy and you have probably received an email about it. If not, below is a copy of the announcement from Dr. Rachel Thompson, Director of The Faculty Resource Center. Let me know should you have any questions or concerns regarding the accessibility of your website.
Karen

Hello!
The University of Alabama (UA) is committed to ensuring equal access to information, programs, and activities for all its constituents, including individuals with disabilities. Everyone in the UA community has some responsibility when it comes to creating documents, images, audio, video, and web content accessible to users with disabilities.

You have been identified as a potential digital content creator for The University of Alabama through your position type, via IT records, or by a UA technology accessibility liaison. If your duties or responsibilities include creating, managing, sharing, or procuring digital content via a UA web site or another University-affiliated medium (example: departmental social media), please read and prepare to follow The University of Alabama Web Resources Accessibility policy (https://www.ua.edu/about/policies/files/Web-Resources-Accessibility-Policy.pdf), which was approved in late 2018. In November 2019, the University’s technology accessibility team will begin reviewing UA web resources for compliance with this policy.

This policy applies to public-facing web resources, campus-wide web resources, and web resources needed to conduct core University administrative and academic functions. Please note – these requirements also apply to documents or publications created for print, but that are posted online via pdf or other digital file format. Anyone responsible for creating, dissemination, selecting, or purchasing web resources on behalf of UA (students, faculty, staff, contractors, and volunteers) should do the following:

1.    Review the policy.
2.    Identify digital content in your purview that is covered by the policy.
3.    Review the WCAG 2.0 A/AA success criteria pertinent to that content.
4.    Address accessibility needs via remediation or development of an equivalent access plan.

Learn what you can do to make the web more accessible and usable to everyone; visit http://accessibility.ua.edu to access training and other resources (https://accessibility.ua.edu/accessibilityresources). Thank you for your efforts to make The University of Alabama more inclusive and accessible for all!

Sincerely,

Rachel Thompson
Dr. Rachel S. Thompson
Director, Faculty Resource Center
The Office of Information Technology

Happy New Year! While I haven't posted in our blog since last August, that doesn't mean we haven't been busy in the FRC (Faculty Resource Center)! On the contrary.

From 2012 to 2018...here we grow!
The number of People.ua.edu sites has grown by leaps and bounds! As of the end of 2018, there were just over 500 live faculty and graduate student websites. I truly hope you are finding your site to be a valuable asset.

Keeping up with the times!
You might have noticed a slightly different look to our main site - people.ua.edu. In keeping with modern website designs, the site has been updated to a responsive designed theme which means the site scales its content and elements to match the screen size on which it is viewed.

I encourage those that have an older, non-responsive theme to consider updating. Responsive-design themes are mobile-friendly and can also help improve search engine rankings. These themes also offer additional features such as sections, flexible headers, and photo and video backgrounds. Browse through the available themes and then contact me at people@ua.edu. I'm happy to make the update for you.

Congratulations go to....
Finally, there are three NEW members of the People.ua.edu Showcase. Congratulations to Michael Fedewa, Amanda Koh, and Jongjin Kim. Their sites make use of Weebly's many elements, provide valuable information, and maintain a professional look!
Check them out on our Showcase page.

That's all the updates for now. I hope the rest of your semester is a success!
Karen

Congratulations to our newest members of the People.ua.edu Showcase: Jim Bindon, Erik Peterson, and Jo Weaver (a joint site), Lisa Davis, and Kelsey Lowman.! Each have shown great use of their selected website themes. We love what you've created!

Take a look at their sites on our Showcase page.

Good news.... the migration from Weebly Platform to Weebly Cloud is complete.
Bad news.... some users will need an "invitation email" to log into the site editor. If you manage more than one site, you will need the invitation. I've tried to send one to most of you but may have missed a few.

If you have any issue logging in, try clearing your cache. That has worked in most cases. If you still have problems, contact me and I'll send an invite email which will enable you to set a new password and log in. After that, you should not have any difficulty.

You can continue to login at your usual location and should be redirected to the url:
http://uofa.weeblycloud.com/portal
or you can save the new url for direct access.

Hang tight, folks. We are almost through the pains of transitions!
Karen
kaburns1@ua.edu

We have still not received the go-ahead for migration to Weebly Cloud AND many of you are still having difficulties logging into your site. The GOOD NEWS is that we have found a solution that has worked 100% of the time.

• First, use Firefox.
  
• Clear your cache.  Make sure you do not have the login for your site open in a tab when you do.
  
• Try and log in.
• If you get in, don’t be shocked if you get kicked out again when you click the Edit button. Just repeat above steps.
  
• It may take 2 or 3 times, but you will get in eventually.
• Do NOT click the reset password button. That is not the issue and will not work.
  
• If you still cannot get in, give me a call at 348-8016 or email me at kaburns1@ua.edu.
  

I promise this is a temporary issue that will be resolved!

Karen

The migration to Weebly Cloud that was scheduled for today, June 19th, has been postponed until early next week. We will update this page when an exact date and time has been established.

Thank you for your patience!

On Tuesday, June 19th, people.ua.edu websites will migrate from the Weebly Designer Platform to Weebly Cloud giving a fresh, new look to the dashboard page and providing a single sign-on location for users who manage multiple sites. Users will not see any changes in the site editor or the live version of their sites.

Below is an example of the current dashboard and the new dashboard. Please note: The image of the new dashboard is from our test account which will look slightly different once we have fully migrated.

Migrating to Weebly Cloud should resolve the login issues we have recently encountered.

More changes will occur to the administration side of people.ua.edu. Weebly Cloud offers:

• the option of adding multiple contributors to one site
• the ability to recover deleted pages and text elements

During migration, users will be unable to log into the site editor starting 2:30pm on Tuesday, June 19th. The process should take no more than one hour.

There are more benefits and enhancements coming in the near future so be sure to watch for updates!

​The long awaited final three responsive themes are finally completed!

​These new themes offer some unique features not available on our other themes: sections, flexible headers, and video backgrounds.
 
Sections
Sections allow you to really customize your website! Adding sections takes just a few clicks:

• Drag and drop the new section element onto your site
• Choose a section layout or add your own elements individually
• Customize the section with image, text, color or video backgrounds

You can also create parallax scrolling and reveal effects directly from the sections editor. Predefined sections layouts help you create sites faster, providing professionally designed templates you can customize and build off of. These layouts include: gallery sections, team pages, menus, contact pages and much more. You can easily preview and remove layouts if you don’t like them.
 
Flexible Headers
Flexible headers give you the freedom to drag on new elements, tweak content positions and dynamically change the height of the header area simply by dragging it up and down. With this feature, you can now control your header like the rest of your site content. Instead of using an image, change the background color to give your text more “pop” or add a slideshow! These flexible headers really ARE flexible!
 
Video Backgrounds
Video backgrounds provide extra charisma to your pages and can be added to both sections and flexible headers when you customize backgrounds. You can access video backgrounds from Edit Background within the section element or during header customization. You can upload your own video or choose from a gallery of curated videos.

If you see something you like and want to change from your current template, let me know which one, and I'll be glad to apply it for you. All your content will carry over to the new design with one possible exception: the images used in the header, either as a single image or as a slideshow. These images may NOT carry over. They may need to be uploaded again. 

Visit the Themes page to view our new designs.

Can't wait to see what great things you do with these new themes!

​Karen

Congratulations to our latest exemplar websites!!
​

• Dr. Jon Benstead, Biological Sciences department, uses his site to not only present his work, but to present the work of his research students and to recruit new students!
• Dr. Mithat C. Kisacikoglu in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Dr. Kisacikoglu made great use of visuals to help draw attention to his site content! His site is clean, crisp, and informative.
• Rong Zheng is a PhD candidate in the Culverhouse College of Business Applied Statistics Program. Rong’s site is straight-forward and organized so she can easily add more content as her work develops.

 
All three did a great job! Visit the Showcase page to view the new sites.

We have several more great sites to showcase and hope to begin updating the page on a monthly basis.
​Will your site be next?!

Recently, our web provider, Weebly, updated its image editor. While it is a GOOD thing for the average image, it is not such a good thing when it comes to uploading a logo and adding text to the site title. Unless you want to make a change to your site title, this update will not adversely affect you. 
 
The new editor recognizes the current site logo and title as a single image. As an image, the text cannot be edited. No worries, though, it simply means we had to make a change to the logo itself allowing empty space for new text to be added. Just HOW we fixed it isn't really that important. What is important is that you know how to update your site!

For those who want to edit the site title, follow the instructions on our Site Title and Logo page or feel free to contact our office and we’ll be happy to make the change for you.

​Karen