Magicscript, the university's first web publishing system, relies on PHP 7.2, a technology that will cease being supported (universally) on November 30, 2020. The University of Vermont has therefore adopted the same date as the end-of-life for our Magicscript platform. If you own content on this platform, you have until then to plan for where your content will live on and to migrate it. Below we offer a plan for which platform best suits which type of content.

EXISTING PERSONAL, RESEARCH OR STATIC COURSE INFO (NOT ONLINE COURSES)

UVM netID holders who still maintain a Magicscript personal or research websites should move these websites to the UVM Wordpress platform, new UVM theme, before November 2020. We've udpated the UVM theme, and developed a handy user guide for getting started.

Please note: An alternative to this is re-considering your need to have a stand-alone website for your web needs. It’s been found that many UVM affiliates feel they need a standalone website when a page or two would actually meet their needs. There are opportunities for including lab or creative work on your departmental Drupal presence, incorporate into your faculty profile, or other. The upside of this is more eyes on your content when visitors to the parent website may see/learn more about your endeavor, you benefit from your home unit’s marketing efforts, and you have the support of your unit’s webmaster.

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OFFICIAL UVM DEPARTMENTAL WEBSITES WITH DEDICATED WEBMASTERS

Owners of departmental accounts that have not yet transitioned to Drupal should request a Drupal group and move Magicscript sites to Drupal by November 2020. (Please note there is a launch process that can take weeks. The sooner the site is submitted, the better the chance of it being live by the end of Nov.). Drupal is for the most visible university websites thta have dedicated webmasters. If you do not meet this criteria, Drupal is not for your unit's needs.

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APPLICATIONS RUNNING MAGICSCRIPT

Specialty websites running on Magicscript can be moved or rebuilt on the UVM Silk hosting service. We offer a standalone UVM branded template that will wrap your application in the UVM branding (header-logo-footer).

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LEGACY WEB CONTENT THAT HAS BEEN LEFT ON ZOO, STILL UTILIZING MAGICSCRIPT

Some UVM webmasters may have chosen at the time of their Drupal site launch to create an exception to the redirect. This allowed for old files to still be found at their “old” web address so that webmasters did not have to move all of the files during build. FOR NOW, this is still a functional solution and we do not plan to alter this for November 30, however we do recommend that you begin thinking of a more permanent solution. Eventually, this will cease to be a viable solution.

SUPPORT:

  • Internal files should be moved to either Sharepoint or Microsoft Teams.
  • If units have a surplus of files that need to be featured on their Drupal website, the Web Team has developed a solution for listable documents. This is not widely deployed and may not be the best solution for everyone. Those interested should drop into weekly help hours to learn more.
  • Your unit communications staff who support web.