Frequently Asked Questions
The web consolidation project officially kicked-off in January 2023 and is slated to take 18 months to complete for a launch date of June 25, 2024.
Each of the main legacy sites should be maintained up until June 2024 when the consolidated website is planned to launch. Since we don't have a fully comprehensive Commonwealth branded and designed website, we need to maintain the existing campus websites as they continue to serve existing student populations, as well as attract and serve prospective students organically.
Our goal is that the consolidation project will provide an informative and easy to navigate experience for students looking to learn more about the various campuses as part of a single destination website. When the new website is launched in June 2024, measures will be taken to ensure the individual domains redirect to the new site, but at that point, they would not function as separate, stand-along website experiences.
University stakeholders helped shape the CU website by participating in a March 2023 survey sent to the university community. OHO also conducted a series of stakeholder interviews with university constituent groups. Additional opportunities for feedback will be shared as they are made available.
Updates throughout the project will be shared with the University Leadership Council and through email to the university community.
Training opportunities for university faculty and staff to use the Drupal content management system (CMS) for the new commonwealthu.edu website will be shared when available.
When draft content for each page is ready, a web team member will contact the subject matter expert(s) in each area for feedback and additional information.
The Drupal content management system (CMS), which is currently being utilized by bloomu.edu and the commonwealthu.edu microsite, is the most approachable CMS for a wide range of editors and allows for easy training of new users. It is also an open-source platform, which allows the university to partner with a broad range of web agencies to provide support.
The bloomu.edu website is the most recently redesigned website of the three, going through a comprehensive redesign process in 2021. Building the new website from the existing bloomu.edu web structure allows the university to leverage much of the work that was done during the recent redesign and to save significant costs in building a new website.
Many of the existing wireframes from the bloomu.edu site will be repurposed for the new CU website. Four additional wireframes will be developed to be used on the commonwealthu.edu website.
The commonwealthu.edu site was developed as an Admissions microsite ahead of the launch of the comprehensive CU website and is meant to supplement the bloomu.edu, lockhaven.edu, and mansfield.edu websites. The microsite is primarily a landing page for marketing and recruitment campaigns but does also include limited content for integrated initiatives and information.
The current structure was not designed to be a full, comprehensive website and is currently limited in its ability to meet a wide variety of web needs. For these reasons, the existing commonwealthu.edu website can be viewed as a stopgap until the fully consolidated website becomes a realization in June 2024.
The Athletic Departments of the Bloomsburg Huskies, Lock Haven Bald Eagles, and Mansfield Mountaineers each have their own distinct websites through Sidearm Sports. Because each campus is retaining its full complement of athletic programs on each campus, the web presence for each athletic department will remain separate as they currently are.
A member of the MarComm department has been assigned to each of the academic colleges: Zeigler College of Business, College of Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities, College of Education and Human Studies, College of Health Professions, College of Science and Technology.
When an academic program is fully approved by Academic Affairs, the MarComm liaison will reach out to the department chair to understand the updates that need to be made to any or all of the current webpages.
Subject matter experts, also called SMEs, are professionals who have advanced knowledge in a specific field or are viewed as an authority in a particular program, department, or topic. These individuals are uniquely qualified to provide guidance on website content accuracy and play a key role is reviewing, editing, and approving drafted content prior to going live on the new CU website.
Please use the MarComm Request Form and a member of the web team will assist you with your request.
If you need training on how to use the content management system (CMS) for bloomu.edu, lockhaven.edu, and/or mansfield.edu, please complete the MarComm Request Form and a member of the web team will assist you with your request.
Please note that each campus website uses a different content management system so the update experience and process is unique for each platform. This may require additional trainings if requesting training across multiple domains.