Building Your Next YaleSites Experience
Moving forward, together
YaleSites is moving beyond Drupal 7 — it’s time to plan your website’s next chapter. While migration requires planning, it’s also your opportunity to reimagine your site, streamline content, and embrace a more flexible, user-friendly platform built for Yale’s future. Let this guide show you what to expect and how to begin.
Redesigning takes time, resources, and planning, but it’s also a chance to improve your site’s structure, content, and user experience. A clear plan makes the process smoother and leads to a stronger, more sustainable site.
Why it matters: Rebuilding a site is a significant project. Start when you and your team have capacity — and when your audience’s needs align.
Best approach: Schedule your rebuild during a slower time in your department and consider academic calendars if your users are students or faculty.
Why it matters: Even with an easier platform, migrating takes time and people. Without support, progress will stall.
Best approach: Assign a point person and, if possible, a small team. Give them time and space to do the work. Consider hiring a vendor.
Why it matters: A great website starts with knowing who it’s for and what it needs to do.
Best approach: Review your current site, talk to stakeholders, gather user feedback, or check your site analytics to guide your decisions. See Getting Started with Siteimprove.
Why it matters: You can’t rebuild what you haven’t reviewed. A content audit helps you see what’s working — and what isn’t.
Best approach: Inventory all your pages. Flag what to keep, revise, or remove. This makes the rebuild more efficient and purposeful. Consider taking our content audit training and writing for the web trainings.
Why it matters: Publishing your new site isn’t the final task — it’s the final step in a longer chain.
Best approach: Build in time for internal reviews, stakeholder approvals, accessibility checks, and user testing before going live.
Evaluate Your Current Site
Learn the New Platform
A New Way to Build, with More Flexibility
The updated YaleSites platform is built around reusable content blocks and layouts. Instead of editing one long page at a time, you’ll be assembling modular content in flexible layouts. This shift opens up more control and creativity — but it does take some getting used to.
Apply Best Practices for Better Content
Clear, Focused Content Makes a Big Difference
Improving your website starts with learning and applying best practices. From writing for the web to SEO, findability, and accessibility, each plays a key role in helping users get what they need. Clear content, thoughtful structure, and inclusive design work together to create a better experience for everyone.
Request a site to get started
All sites start with a development site, a private space to build a new site or recreate content from an old one before going live.
YaleSites Drupal 7 Support
We understand that you may not be ready to migrate to a new YaleSite. For this reason, our team will continue to support existing Drupal 7 sites indefinitely. To learn more, take a look at the plan we have in place.
We're Here to Help
Explore our extensive resources, join expert trainings, visit office hours, or contact our team!