When joining the University as Head of Digital Development in August 2024, I was immediately struck by not just how busy the Digital Development team is, but how incredibly efficiently the team operates. The operation is a bit like a kitchen in a Michelin-starred restaurant, in which expert chefs go about their business with great skill, speed, and above all, teamwork, to deliver complex and carefully crafted dishes.
The first quarter of 2025 has seen no let-up in the pace of orders placed and Digital dishes delivered. Here is a brief overview of things that have been on the menu.
Hugo improvements
The University’s bespoke, Ruby-on-Rails-based content management system, Typecase, is an incredibly fine-tuned, robust system. It is here that website data is edited by the many users of the system.
When pages are ready to be published, a mechanism called Hugo takes over and updates the static HTML pages that comprise the website’s front-end structure (the files that users see in their browser).
Over the past few months, we’ve been looking closely at this system, to address various speed and synchronisation issues, and have rolled out a new version which brings enormous improvements in reliability and stability. You’ll be pleased to hear that Hugo is in better health than ever.
Digital Roadmap – the ever-changing menu
The Digital roadmap is at the core of what we do; to continue the restaurant analogy, it’s a bit like a giant menu for an elaborate, ongoing banquet, combining the work of both the Digital Development and Content teams. Behind the scenes, we’ve been working hard to make sure that this is more comprehensive and better structured than ever and includes all the many pieces of development that we want to undertake across both parts of the team for the foreseeable future.
The Ambassador Platform (TAP)
A central feature in student recruitment is the ability for prospective students to query current students on their experiences of studying at the University. Until recently, we’ve used a platform called Unibuddy, but, at the beginning of the year, migrated to a new service: The Ambassador Platform (TAP). The front-end team (Rebecca & Sam) has taken on this challenge at short notice with their characteristic calm, ‘can-do’ attitude, rolling out this change in a matter of weeks. The TAP feature appears on relevant student recruitment pages, such as the undergraduate course pages, adding a card that stays on the page as the user scrolls, inviting them to 'Chat now'.
URL shortener – new version coming soon
Apart from providing and developing Typecase, the content management system which supports the bulk of the website, the Digital Development team also provides a variety of other essential tools, such as the URL shortener. This allows the setup of short URLs such as http://go.bath.ac.uk/tuition-fees/, which can be used anywhere where brevity is key – e.g. on printed materials.
Sometimes in the world of web development, code becomes more and more difficult to maintain and develop further, as was the case with the version of this application used up until now.
Having identified the need to create a fresh, future-proofed version, our developer Daniel has rebuilt this from the ground up in a new, emerging programming language (Go lang). Apart from being easier to maintain and extend, if required, one big benefit of the new approach is that we will be able to provide secure URLs vial the URL shortener – i.e. those with ‘https://’ rather than just ‘http://’. With the preparatory work complete in Q1, the new version of the URL shortener will be rolled out in Q2.
SAMIS integration work
As a part of the University’s ongoing digital evolution, the management of all course-related data has been incrementally brought together in a bespoke student records system called SAMIS. This is designed to rationalise management and data storage, ensuring, amongst other things, that course information is in sync across all platforms.
Although SAMIS itself sits outside of the Digital team’s remit, the display of course information is very much part of our work.
This project has been an excellent example of extremely detailed, cross-departmental teamwork, over many months of painstaking development. Under the leadership of Rhian Griggs, Head of Content Strategy, and in close collaboration with the Faculty Content Managers, our backend developers, initially Daniel, and latterly, Farooq, have been working tirelessly to make sure that SAMIS data is imported smoothly into the content management system that displays course content on the website – Typecase for Courses.
After a great deal of complex, methodical work, this integration has now been completed, ensuring that data flows seamlessly and be updated as easily as possible.
Justin’s back
For those who have been at the University for a while, back-end Ruby on Rails development guru Justin Keevill may not need any introduction. It’s been a great pleasure to be able to welcome him back on a short-term contract, in order to turn his attention to various infrastructure improvements, including Typecase upgrades, the creation of various reports, and improvements to the website templates. We're already seeing the benefit of his work – e.g. on Topic and Landing page templates, where it is now possible for editors to implement new content types such as videos, and edit summaries where required.
Coming soon
As you might imagine, these are just some of the ‘dishes’ which have emerged from the busy Digital kitchen, but there is a huge amount of additional work taking place to improve our infrastructure, make sure software and processes work smoothly, and closely cooperate with third-party agencies who are working on further products and services (e.g. for reporting and evaluation).
There’s never a dull moment, and I’m very much looking forward to being able to present further updates at the end of Q2.
Luke Roskilly, Head of Digital Development (aka Development Maître D’)
Respond
