Last week, Punxsutawney Phil proclaimed six more weeks of winter. But we took little note of the pomp and circumstance surrounding our mammal friend in the Northeast. Being the industrious Beavers that we are, the project team was hard at work getting the new website ready for content entry. And our fellow content teams are continuing to work together with colleagues statewide to organize content in preparation for that.

But in the spirit of looking ahead, let’s pause for a quick update on what the next six(ish) weeks look like for this project and our work together.

Status and timeline update:

• Launch: We are on track for a March launch.
• Content entry: Our goal was to open the site to content teams for initial content entry in late January or early February. We’re pushing that out by 1-2 weeks to ensure the experience is as productive and hassle-free as possible for content teams. The basic framework and functions are developed. But we are taking extra time to be sure the back-end forms and front-end displays are clean, simple, and user-friendly.
• What’s next? Our team’s focus for the next two weeks includes:
  • Continued programming and basic design
  • Permission testing (making sure content teams will be able to do what they need to do, and not see extraneous information and settings)
  • User testing (asking a couple brave souls to serve as alpha testers (guinea pigs, canaries…you get the idea) for content entry)
  • Creating basic training guides and short videos for content teams
  • As-needed advice and Q&A with content teams, and a kickoff meeting with the Community Vitality team (welcome to the party, Mallory!)

Other updates:

• The content strategist position posting closes February 11. Please share the posting with your networks, and encourage interested and qualified candidates to apply.
• We’ve been working with site managers for Extension association websites (OSUEA, ESP, and OAEA) to transition to the OSU WordPress platform and provide basic training. Those new sites will be live within the next couple of weeks, and current URLs will redirect to the new sites.

As always, let us know what questions you have (and check the FAQs!).