UIC celebrates its 600th website on the UIC Red Multisite Network
About UIC Red Multisite Network
UIC’s Red Multisite Network is powered by a WordPress platform including a UIC branded theme framework for a consistent look among all UIC department websites. The theme offers a variety of page layouts and content components that are designed to create responsive, accessible, and usable websites without extensive knowledge of website development.
Currently, the Red platform hosts a total of 13 College sites, with two more scheduled to migrate this year, in addition to the inclusion of 10 Vice Chancellor units, lab and research center websites, and administrative and student focused department sites.
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The platform’s steady expansion and increasing popularity among UIC’s web properties underscore its effectiveness and significance in maintaining a cohesive online presence for the university.
| Technology Solutions Director of Digital Experience
UIC Red Multisite Network History Heading link
The Red WordPress Multisite platform at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) draws its inspiration from the success of a popular website theme developed in 2012 for the now-retired Publish WordPress service. Additionally, it takes cues from the revamped UIC Brand, which was launched in 2014 and introduced the UIC Circle Mark and the adoption of the color Red.
The first website to embrace UIC’s new red circle logo was UIC.edu. While this site served as the primary entry point to UIC, it was recognized that numerous college, departmental, and related websites collectively attracted a significantly larger audience to the UIC brand.
“Understanding the importance of maintaining consistency, usability, and accessibility across all these web properties, the aim was to create a UIC website platform that would be user-friendly for content creators and managers while adhering to the UIC brand guidelines,” says Technology Solutions Director of Digital Experience, Kimberly Charles.
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The first Red-themed website to be launched was givingtuesday.uic.edu in November 2016, followed by the debut of Cuppa.uic.edu, the first College site, in April 2017. Subsequently, in May 2017, the Provost officially declared Red as the designated website platform for UIC, initially encompassing 23 College and Vice Chancellor Units.
With the declaration in place, a comprehensive project was initiated to assess requirements, identify opportunities, and establish a development pipeline using Agile methodologies. This approach aimed to facilitate ongoing improvements to the platform and cater to evolving needs.
As the platform gained wider adoption and the number of sites continued to grow annually, the next logical step was transitioning from UIC’s self-hosted web servers to cloud hosting. In September 2022, the migration to Pantheon, a cloud hosting provider, was completed.
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Harnessing the unique requirements of every site to develop shared functionality is a significant advantage of leveraging a platform like Red. Furthermore, establishing a streamlined process that empowers groups to customize their own functionalities will propel the ongoing enhancement of Red to new heights.
| Assistant Director of Software Delivery and Data
Supporting Accessibility Heading link
All websites created on the Red WordPress multisite must conform to federal and state accessibility standards as outlined by the World Wide Web Consortium’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). While the common areas of the UIC Red WordPress theme, its custom post types, and related components are developed according to WCAG 2.0 level AA standards, departments using the Red platform must maintain accessibility of all content entered on their respective sites before and after launch.