Our team is constantly gathering insights from the YaleSites community through:
These insights directly inform our development priorities, ensuring that YaleSites continues to evolve in ways that matter most to you.
This evolution is more than a simple technology update. It’s a restructuring of YaleSites to reflect Yale’s commitment to our guiding principles. Supported by design input from OPAC and technical assistance from ITS, we aim to nurture a sense of community. Our focus has shifted from technology to storytelling, enabling you to share your Yale story.
The product is rooted in these five key areas
We created a unified platform that reflects Yale’s brand and legacy. By leveraging Yale’s typographical legacy, we’ve built a design system—supported by Emulsify, an open-source project run by Four Kitchens—that works independently from the CMS. This system includes elements like colors and typefaces, creating a professional yet inviting digital presence. It’s designed to adapt to future needs, permitting broader application within Yale’s digital ecosystem.
We’re committed to accessibility. Our platform is designed to provide an accessible experience on all sites, devices, and platforms. With tools like SiteImprove and the editoria11y module, we’re making website accessibility a standard. Backed by a dedicated accessibility team and comprehensive testing, our commitment lies in offering an enjoyable user experience for all.
We’ve put our users at the heart of our platform. With Drupal’s layout builder and Storybook.js via Emulsify, we’re offering a simplified, intuitive interface. A selection of ‘blocks’ enables you to build a page that captures your unique Yale narrative, with the flexibility to adjust theme settings universally or individually.
We’re enhancing our platform’s security and efficiency by managing a single, unified codebase in collaboration with Pantheon.io. This approach, which includes SSL secured cached content delivery from over 60 global locations via Fastly, ensures individual content storage and allows for site-wide changes and block-level layout, creating a cohesive customizable user experience that is fast, stable, and secure.
We’re future-proofing YaleSites; our ongoing improvement strategy ensures YaleSites is prepared for future needs. Developed for data classified as Low Risk, our flexible design enables the introduction of new integrations, Blocks, and content management methods without major overhauls. We’re committed to continuous growth and evolution, introducing new features seamlessly while maintaining security and stability.
For those tasked with building and maintaining sites, we offer extensive training opportunities. Whether you need to build a website or devise a content strategy, we’ve got you covered. Our new platform is designed to please not only our site creators but also all site visitors. Upcoming features, such as shared layouts and content post-syndication, will be geared towards enhancing collaboration and simplifying content sharing.
Your input is invaluable to the continuous improvement of YaleSites. We encourage you to:
Have a great idea for YaleSites? We’d love to hear it! Contact the YaleSites team by emailing us which submits a ticket through ServiceNow.
The strength of YaleSites comes from our collaborative community. When your department develops new features or enhancements, they benefit the entire Yale web ecosystem. Learn more about how you can contribute to the platform’s growth.