Need Webpage Help? Call on Your Drupal Helper!

In the event you don’t already know, Drupal is the content management system behind WPI.edu. It’s the platform upon which the university’s web presence—both external and internal—is built, updated, and maintained. It’s a shared system (called distributed authorship) that lets numerous people across our campus post events, announcements, department and program content, and more. It’s also much more DIY than you might realize.  

There are also many more Drupal helpers than you might realize. If you have something to add to your web pages and you don’t know how, worry not: every department has a helper (officially known as a Drupal group administrator), who has been trained to access, add to, and update web pages on the back end. They are also the folks that departments, divisions, and offices can turn to for help writing and posting news in an announcement and/or who can make sure an event gets into the university calendar.  There’s a list of Drupal administrators here: https://www.wpi.edu/offices/marketing-communications/cmshelp/drupal/group-administrators/departments.  

Your Drupal administrator helps keep your department pages—and, in turn, the WPI website as a whole—updated and looking good. The Division of Marketing Communications (MarComm) oversees the university website and is responsible for university-level content (including the homepage) but doesn’t have the direct line of sight into the activities and news coming from all the offices and departments across campus. That’s where the group administrators (and others they can designate as Drupal editors) can help get their news out quickly.  Still, MarComm is here to help—our CMShelp@wpi.edu team can support group administrators with questions and challenges, and we have many resources to help with best practices.  

That’s why we appreciate all the Drupal helpers across campus. Reach out to them when you need assistance. Even better, reach out to them now to thank them in advance for being such an important resource for your group, department, and the university.