HarvardSites Community of Practice: Our First Session Brings the Web Community Together

We're thrilled to share a recap of our very first HarvardSites Community of Practice session, a new gathering designed to bring site builders, administrators, and platform enthusiasts together to learn, share, and shape what comes next. Led by Kenton, Kate, Peter, Laurier, and Gabriel, the session was a great first step toward building a stronger, more connected HarvardSites community.

View the slide deck or watch the video below.

What's new on the platform

The team walked through a great lineup of recent feature enhancements, including compact list displays for cleaner content organization, a media gallery component, refined design polish across the platform, and continued investment in accessibility improvements. It's exciting to see how much the platform has grown, and there's more on the way.

Kate and Peter gave live demonstrations of upcoming features that we think site administrators will love: improvements to file linking, a new reviewer role for smoother editorial workflows, support for vertical video, and enhancements to the columns component. 

These updates reflect what we've heard from the community, and we're glad to be building features that make everyday site management easier.

Keeping the platform secure and reliable

We also took time to talk about how HarvardSites keeps Harvard's web presence safe, including a look at our web application firewall and how it helps manage and protect site traffic. Security is a big part of what makes this shared platform trustworthy, and we want our community to feel confident in how it's protected.

Celebrating great sites and sharing what works

One of the highlights of the session was showcasing some standout examples of sites built on HarvardSites. Seeing what our community has created is always inspiring, and we encouraged everyone in the room to keep sharing their own tips, tricks, and best practices. This kind of peer learning is exactly what the Community of Practice is here to foster.

Looking ahead with AI

We introduced an exciting new AI-powered content strategist tool that's in development, designed to help site owners think through navigation, content organization, and audience pathways. We also demonstrated our new Drupal support chatbot, a handy new resource for getting quick answers to platform questions.

Resources to help you succeed

As always, we highlighted the many support resources available to the community, including tutorial videos, regular office hours, and our growing documentation library. Whatever stage you're at with your site, there's support ready for you.

Your voice matters

Kenton closed the session with a reminder of something we believe deeply: community feedback shapes the future of this platform. Every idea, question, and piece of feedback helps us build a better HarvardSites for everyone.

We wrapped up with an invitation for broader participation in future sessions, along with a short survey for attendees to share their thoughts. We can't wait to see this community grow, and we hope you'll join us next time!