Voices is an excellent fit for smaller websites with relatively simple content and functional needs and is built upon the industry-standard WordPress content management system. The UChicago Voices website template, built on the Divi theme, provides an official University design with useful features built in.

Voices is recommended for...

Blogs

  • Develop your voice.
  • Share your work.
  • Gain digital literacy using the most popular blogging platform.

Digital Identity & Expression

  • Share your photographs on the web.
  • Build a digital CV and resume.
  • Give your research a place to be discovered.
  • Develop your digital identity.
  • Provide content and multimedia to your students in a user-friendly way.
  • Protect your site with CNet login.
  • Customize your site with theme options, and widgets.
  • Get managed WordPress hosting, backups, and upgrades.

Academic Uses

  • Class blogs
  • Creative assignments (for example, keyword or timeline assignments)
  • E-Portfolio

Portfolios

  • Document and reflect on your learning experiences.
  • Upload files, such as assignments and original photos.
  • Gain digital literacy using the most popular blogging platform

Lab or Group Website

  • Use a UChicago-branded template to create your own free lab or group website.
  • All UChicago-branded templates are pre-built to include sample pages, menus, and styles.
  • Over 100 plugins are available in the University Voices theme to provide additional functionality.
  • Submit a UChicago Website Request to discuss creating a Voices site.

Voices is not recommended for...

Larger, more complex websites. Below you will find some cases in which the Voices platform is not appropriate to use.

More than 100 pages of content

  • Page formats are not abstracted into true templates. You will have to duplicate an existing page in order to use that page’s format for other pages.  Once you make a bunch of copies, if you wanted to make a change to pages with that format, you’d have to make the change to each page individually.
  • A long list of pages can be difficult to manage. In the Voices administrative dashboard, the list of pages can only be sorted by title, or filtered with a text search.
  • Limited options for deeper navigation. Websites with a larger number of pages are more likely to have more than two levels of navigation (more than main navigation and second-level navigation). Voices does not offer a left-hand secondary navigation menu or breadcrumbs, so in a website with more content, a user may lose track of where they are in the site.

More than 5 items in the main navigation menu

Voices horizontal navigation menu wraps to a second line on smaller screens when there are more than approximately five short main navigation items.

Customizable site search

Voices search results are weighted towards News/Blog content types, and news and blog content will always appear first in results. Voices offers no way to change how search results are weighted, how they are structured, or how they appear. Voices internal site search cannot be configured to search select parts of a website or any domains outside the client’s Voices website domain. Other website offerings through IT Services employ the Google Custom Search Engine, which provides much greater flexibility and control over which pages and domains to search, as well as how to structure and weight results.

Sensitive Data

Voices is not suitable for hosting sensitive data. In many cases, University of Chicago Medicine candidates may not be an appropriate fit for Voices, unless content is public-facing only. UCM faculty and staff should contact UCM IT Services for web services. Click here for more information on the University’s data policy.

Access restricted by CNet ID or Grouper Group

Voices websites, sections, and pages cannot be restricted to specific CNetIDs or by Grouper groups. Voices pages or websites can be access-controlled with password protection, limited to a group of users invited by the administrator, or limited to registered Voices users.

Intranet functions

Voices and ExpressionEngine are both website solutions and NOT suitable options for those who want the functionality of an intranet. The University offers two other solutions for this use: UChicago Wikis and Sharepoint (part of Office 365). Voices may be used as a simple intranet (by manually adding user roles and permissions, using password protection, or using blog functionality to communicate and collaborate to an internal group). Customers who use Voices as an intranet may do so at their own risk and without the intervention of IT Services.

A custom (vanity) URL

IT Services can domain-map or provide a custom uchicago.edu address in some cases.  Domains must be approved by University Communications.  IT Services can provide redirects for websites that are not approved for domain-mapping.

A content workflow

If you need to work on drafts of your content, and submit a draft for approval without affecting the live website, Voices may not be the right option. Within a content workflow, a website can have pages with states of drafting, reviewed, approved, and published. Higher-profile websites are more likely to have content that may need to be reviewed and approved before being published.

Custom integrations

If you need custom integrations or bespoke functionality, you should consider working with a recommended vendor. This includes installing custom plugins and code changes to the Voices theme. Please reach out to webwork@uchicago.edu for more information.