What is SUpal?
The unified web platform at Syracuse University is a collaborative initiative developed by the Division of Marketing and shared for use by the campus community.
Built on the Drupal content management system, this platform enables schools, colleges, units and faculty across the University to build and maintain accessible, secure, brand-aligned websites with no design or technical expertise required.
SUpal is built on the Drupal 11 platform. It offers a robust and user-friendly site-building experience that enables users to quickly create visually engaging, content-rich websites with minimal setup time.
The website solution (including hosting) is provided to the campus community at no charge.
Creating Value for Syracuse University
The SUpal site building solution enables schools, colleges, units and professors to quickly create an attractive, configurable and functional website that meets accessibility and security standards, aligns with the University’s brand, and integrates seamlessly with other campus systems. Not only does this solution allow individuals to easily create a website, it also is more cost-effective (free) and more reliable that outside agencies.
SUpal is designed and built with a focus on improving efficiency across the University. By using a centrally managed, configurable website platform, each team saves time and avoids the additional design, development, and hosting costs of building their own site. This approach allows schools, colleges, and units to maintain a unique online presence while ensuring a consistent, high-quality user experience across all Syracuse University digital touchpoints.
Features
- Flexible
- Secure
- Accessible
- Easily configurable components
- Easy-to-use interface
- Secured access using NetID and Single sign-on
- Free to use
- Service and hosting included
Technical Specs
- Based on Drupal 11
- Future enhancements designed, configured and supported
- Easily migrate content from WordPress
- Meets WCAG 2.2 accessibility requirements.
- Includes increased support for WAI-ARIA
- Search engine form and presentation
- Drag and Drop functionality
- Color contrast and intensity
- Adding skip navigation to core themes
- Image handling
- Form labeling
- Removing duplicate or null tags
- Search engine optimization features, including:
- Global redirect
- Path redirect
- Metatags
- Google Analytics
- Integration with the Localist campus calendar system
- Mobile-ready
User Features
- Site managers have direct control over adding, modifying and deleting user accounts
- Workflows can be created for managing user access, editing and publishing processes
- Easy-to-use interfaces for editing content, adding images and uploading files
- Pre-configured page templates for content including standard pages, article/news/blog pages, profile pages, events and image galleries
- Display filtered content on a page, such as a list of “top stories,” “stories by type,” or people and events
- Web forms, including a simple feedback form, file upload feature and ability to auto-forward responses to a designated email inbox.
- Dynamic multi-tiered navigation
- Robust site search
- Ability to revert to earlier versions of pages
- Taxonomy systems that allow you to create complex categories and tags for sorting, filtering and collecting your data for viewing by site visitors, adding related content to pages
The Content Auditing system allows you to proactively assign content for review and monitor the site to detect and notify site managers of content that hasn't been updated for nine months.