What is Oxford Mosaic?

Oxford Mosaic is the University’s new Drupal Web CMS Platform and web design toolkit which will enable users to build new websites quickly and cost-effectively – and requires no knowledge of Drupal. Hosted in the cloud, Mosaic is available to a wide range of University groups to build their own websites.

Interested in the Public Preview?

Since completing the build of the first release of the University’s new web CMS platform, it has been available in Public Preview: Early Adopters can request new sites and start the process of building them on the new platform, using the toolkit.

The toolkit already includes a number of core content types, page layouts, site themes and widget display styles to choose from and we anticipate that many sites will be built with the functionality currently in the platform.

In order to provide some clarity on the future costs we have also produced a Service Information sheet which details our current view on the likely charging model. As you can see our lowest tier of site, Micro Sites, are free!

Sites which come onto the platform in Preview period will not be charged until the service enters General Availability.

During the Preview phase, technical support for websites will be available on a ‘reasonable endeavours’ basis, provided by the Project team; as the service is not yet fully established we can’t commit to any support SLAs at this point. The platform is hosted externally with Acquia who will be providing 24/7 support to ensure sites stay available over this period. Training and user support will be limited to the provision of occasional workshops until the service enters General Availability, so sites adopting the platform during the Preview period will need to be generally self-sustaining in these areas during this time.

What’s coming next

The initial release of the Oxford Mosaic platform was developed in collaboration with the Humanities Division, on their project to create four faculty websites and a new Divisional website – the four faculty sites are all now live on the platform, with the divisional site imminent and further new sites starting to be created. The contribution from this project has played a key role in developing the toolkit that is now being made available to everyone.

Ashmolean, Museum of Natural History and more…

We are very excited to be working with the digital team in the GLAM Division to ensure that the Ashmolean public facing website can be rebuilt on our new platform!

These projects are likely to drive the development of new functionality into the platform which all participants of the Public Preview will automatically have access to.

General Availability

Once the work to define and implement the Service is concluded at the end of April 2017, it will be possible to extend use of the platform more widely and it will enter General Availability, becoming a fully supported Service.