Getting Started with Emory Universal Site Builder in Drupal
Your guide to building a modern, accessible, Emory-branded website
All Emory websites share two fundamental goals—to communicate Emory's message about its vision and mission and to make it easy for online visitors to find the information they need on all university websites.
The Emory Universal Drupal Site Builder platform is designed to create sites aligned with the Emory brand and accessible to all audiences. There is no coding experience needed with this user-friendly interface.
Still not sure where to begin? Our Writing for the Web tutorial is a great way to think through your content as it relates to the voice and tone of the Emory brand.
How to Create or Migrate a Website
To get started building a new website or migrating your current site into the new platform, follow these steps.
- Request a Domain Name
University Policy 5.2 requires all domain names for Emory websites be approved through the Domain Name Request process. For sites migrating to Drupal that are not changing their existing domain, this requirement is waived.
Domain Request Form - Provision a Site
The Office of Information Technology (OIT) is responsible for site provisioning. Emory websites are published using Drupal 10. All websites share the same Emory codebase to maintain brand consistency across the ecosystem. You may request a site in Universal Site Builder through the OIT Service Now Form.
Site Provisioning Request Form - Learn the System: Training and Documentation
Communications and Marketing has prepared training videos and documentation to support our community in their transition to the Universal Site Builder. When you are ready to build your site, start by watching these videos:
More training videos
- Creating content: building a standard page start to finish in Mercury Editor
- Menus: main navigation, footer and sidebar: editing the three menu systems
- Visual Router: Adding a component to route visitors to other pages on your site
Additional courses and documentation will be added soon.
- Start building your site
Use everything you have learned to begin building your site. If you are starting with a Cascade legacy site, you’ll need to conduct a component-mapping exercise to determine which Drupal components will be best for your content. The digital strategy team has weekly office hours if you need help at any time during the process:
- Launch with Quality Assurance (QA) Review
Prior to launch, your site will go through a Quality Assurance (QA) review by the Communications and Marketing digital strategy team. This review will check for content, brand and technical quality. Your review request must be submitted at least two weeks in advance of the planned go-live date. Less lead time may affect your launch date.
Upon QA approval, your site is ready to launch. OIT Web Hosting will move your site from devevelopment to public. Please refer to this Web Hosting Knowledge Base article for more information.
Follow Accessibility Standards
At Emory, we strive to conform to WCAG 2.2 accessibility standards at the AA level. In order to achieve this level of accessibility, the SiteImprove suite is used on a regular basis to automatically check for errors. Not every accessibility issue can be detected using automated tools such as SiteImprove. Content editors and web developers should work together to make their websites as compliant as possible.
Additional Accessibility Resources
- Introduction to Accessibility
- The Importance of Web Accessibility and How Marketers Can Help
- Three Reasons Readability Should Matter to Content Editors
Project Requests
Communications and Marketing has moved to the Wrike project management system to handle incoming requests, from maintenance requests to multifaceted campaigns. If you have a request or question for us, please use the Wrike request form to get started.
Help While Building Your Site
Attend office hours using the links below.