The IT Division does not currently have training or support resources available to help you learn to use this template or its features. We recommend only departments that have authors/publishers comfortable with using unfamiliar technology without training or help desk support migrate to the NDSU 2018 template at this time.

At a very high level, the process of migrating to the NDSU 2018 template involves changing the template (what defines the visual appearance of the content records that make up a page) to the "NDSU 2018" template and then making content changes desired to make use of the new template features as desired.

First, let's make sure we have a mutual understanding about a few key concepts.

Department web page here means a top-level directory and everything below. For example, www.ndsu.edu/its and all subdirectories or www.ndsu.edu/eci and all subdirectories. Sometimes the top-level directory isn't actually a university department, but rather a "parent unit" or even a program within a department, but we're still talking about a top-level directory and everything below even in that case. We say "department" because often the top-level directories are divided in that fashion.

Migration occurs for an entire department web page. Even if a university department is arranged as a sub-directory of a parent unit in the web hierarchy, such as Student Technology Services ( www.ndsu.edu/its/sts/ ), either all of www.ndsu.edu/its would need to change to the new template or none of /its would change. If a top-level directory contains web content for multiple university departments, then all must update together; conversely, if a directory is only a partial university department, then the migration only impacts that partial department www.ndsu.edu/partialdept and below.

If you want to take a peek to see what the department pages will look like in the new template in order to pre-plan your work, we can apply the template changes temporarily (in the draft workspace) so you can click around and get an idea of what decisions you can make before beginning the migration in earnest. In this case, a workspace manager can submit a request to the IT Help Desk to switch to the NDSU 2018 template (remember the page URL) and later let us know when ready to cancel the template preview. Then re-initiate another migration request further down the road when you're ready to migrate in earnest.

Things to think about as you plan:

1. If the page navigation is long, there may be page re-organization required to keep a horizontally-oriented navigation bar from overflowing to multiple lines. Think about how you can organize the navigation to use visitor-friendly categories that will be short enough to fit on one line but understandable enough that visitors will be able to find what they seek. Things to keep in mind:
   
   The top-level page (that contains drop-down items) links to a page. It is not just a "container" that reveals links when hovered/focused/activated. This means you still need to have usable content on that top-level page (else a blank page will display when visitors click/tap it). Furthermore, visitors might decide instead to navigate directly to a page in the dropdown menu, so you need to construct the pages in the dropdown menu to contain necessary information to make sense when directly accessed (either via the dropdown menu or web search).
   
   The navigation bar will wrap on smaller screens.
   
   If you re-organize, department sub-page URLs will change.
   
   Hint: You can begin re-organizing your pages before changing templates. It's helpful to have only relevant and updated, well-organized, content before even beginning the template migration.
   
   
2. The new template does not include accordions. This is intentional, as accordions suffer from poor accessibility and usability. A "table of contents" is the generally-advised solution on the web--you can automate a TOC using a section index. You can also use grids to arrange the section index to the side, but properly ordered at the top on small screens.
   
   
3. New content types are available, including grids (currently 2, 3, and 4 columns), formatted code, Hero Banner, Social Media page links, and Icon Buttons as of this writing. You might consider how thoughtful application of these contents can improve your pages.

The features of the template and any changes you might want to make after the switch will be the same in both cases; however, when the template is applied on the live page, visitors will see the new template immediately. You'll be able to make changes in the workspace and preview them exactly as they will appear to visitors after the changes are published.

When the template changes in the draft workspace, visitors will continue to see the old template until a CMS administrator publishes the template change. This means you'll be able to draft changes in the workspace and preview in the NDSU 2018 template how the pages/contents will appear after publish of both the contents and the template. If a publisher publishes content or page records, those published changes will continue to display using the NDSU 2011 ("old") template until an administrator publishes the draft template record. This scenario has the advantage of allowing authors/publishers to look at pages using the NDSU 2018 template prior to making the switch on the live pages, but the disadvantage of creating a preview disconnect between what you see in the workspace and what the visitor sees on the website during the "migration" process. You're encouraged to make this "migration" as quickly as possible to minimize the "need" or desire to publish contents to the live pages while still using the "old" template, since you won't be able to preview using that template.