Moving from the Old Web Team to a New Digital Services – Liverpool John Moores University

With a vibrant community of 25,000 students from over 100 countries world-wide, 2,500 staff and 250 degree courses, Liverpool John Moores University is one of the largest, most dynamic and forward-thinking universities in the UK. Founded in 1825 by the City’s movers and shakers, the Liverpool Mechanics Institute set the foundation for transforming education and recognised the impact that it could have on individuals, communities and society in general.

The web team which has been in operation since 1997 has undergone major changes of late, in the last 5 years it has moved home three times (from IT, to Marketing and a final move in August 2014) and now sits within Corporate Business Change Initiatives, a department within Finance and Resources which also covers Finance, Estate Management, Legal and Governance Services, Research and Innovation and Strategic Business Initiatives.

Corporate Business Change Initiatives has a dual role in that it has day to day management of the Finance, HR and payroll systems and the web, and it drives change in the University by leading on multiple projects and programmes of work.

The core team today is:

  • Neil Shack – Senior Developer
  • Phil Bunker – Senior Developer
  • Zhaowei Shen – Developer
  • Andy Kelly – Developer
  • Guy Kilgallen – Training and Support Officer

Seconded in are:

  • Helena Eaton – Digital Communications Manager
  • Suzy Brown – Copywriter
  • Francesca McFarlane – Copywriter

We also have temporary staff supporting the team.

A new University website was launched on March 25th this year (www.ljmu.ac.uk), which involved replacing the existing CMS, Reddot, with Sitecore and renewing all content, implementing a responsive design and ensuring that we meet all legislative and statutory requirements. This has been a very extensive 9 month project and marks the beginning of a programme of work to modernise the University’s digital offering to students, staff and visitors.

Next steps for us include;

  • Development of a student intranet
  • Development of a staff intranet and migration to SharePoint 2013
  • Gathering of all external domains/sites/blogs into the Liverpool John Moores University domain
  • Campaign management

We are happy to share and learn from other delegates.

Note: this session was ran jointly with the master class on Working with an Institutional Web Team – University of Bradford.

The slides from this session are available on Slideshare and embedded below.


Facilitators: Mandy Phillips, Liverpool John Moores University

Time: Tuesday 27th July from 14.00-17.30

Code: B1