We’re hiring!
We have four vacancies in the Digital Communications team, closing date for applications is Friday 18 November. We want to build a team that will ensure the University’s website is standardised, simplified and…
Search by author: Stephen Evans
I have been working for the University since 2005. Prior to that I was a research scientist at Cambridge University studying different biological processes using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Academia wasn't for me, even though scanning strawberries and melons was fascinating! Now I oversee the work of the team and provide support where it is needed, particularly on the web development side of things. I am also an alum of the University, where I studied plant biology.
PDF accessibility
The University website has over 5,000 PDF files, most of which do not comply with accessibility legislation. If documents do not meet accessibility standards they could be breaking the Equality Act 2010. How can we…
Headless WordPress
The term ‘headless WordPress’ has become a common topic for discussion within the WordPress community. What is it and why does it matter?
Don’t make me think
‘Don’t make me think’ is a book by Steve Krug, first published in October 2000. It is one of the most popular introductions to user interface design, with 600,000 copies published in 20 different languages. Now, after…
PHP 8.0 – what’s new
PHP is used on the University website to provide dynamic web content, sometimes to bring content from an external database or from an external feed such as news or events. Each release of PHP is fully supported for two…
What does a Careers Centre website need?
The Digital Communications team started a redesign of the Careers Centre website in January 2021. The first phase of this project aimed to find out what users needed from the Careers Centre. To this end, we carried out…
5% time
For a number of years, the digital communications team has reserved an afternoon per two-week sprint. The idea for this stemmed from Google’s 20% policy where Google reportedly allowed employees to spend 20% of their…
How Web 3.0 will impact higher education
The birth of the internet is considered to be 1 January 1983 – since its inception, the internet has rapidly evolved and spread across the world to impact all aspects of our lives. How will its current development…
From strings to things
Website searches have the potential to be a much richer experience than just finding content that matches the search term (string). Google has been providing ‘rich snippets’ since 2009 to describe people, provide…
Six steps to overcome online indecision
How do we make it easier for users of the University website to find the right link, the right information they need? The current landing pages for current staff and current students provide a plethora of choices –…