/Marketing and Communications
CMS Web Support

October 9, 2026 Website Demo

 

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During our October 9 website demo, the Web Services team shared important updates on the website transition, introduced new and enhanced Modern Campus components and snippets, previewed an upcoming departmental news tool, and demonstrated new schema markup features designed to improve search engine and AI visibility.

 

Website Transition Updates

The team reviewed upcoming milestones for the website transition and plans to clean up outdated links and redirects.

  • January 15, 2027: All remaining legacy websites must be transitioned out of the old environment.

  • February 15, 2027: Target for identifying and correcting broken links following the removal of legacy content.

  • April 15, 2027: Target for implementing a streamlined redirect list, retaining only necessary redirects.

Departments that have not completed their migrations should prioritize requesting a cutover as soon as possible.

 

Transition from Conductor to BrightEdge

Stony Brook is transitioning from Conductor to BrightEdge for SEO monitoring, technical website analysis and AI search optimization.

The team highlighted BrightEdge's AI HyperCube, which provides AI prompt research capabilities to help identify what prospective audiences are asking AI platforms about higher education.

Existing Conductor users, keywords and page groups will be migrated where possible. Updated training resources will be provided.

 

AI-Generated Alt Text

Modern Campus now offers an AI-powered tool to generate starter alternative text for images.

Editors can access this feature through an image's Properties after uploading it to the CMS. All generated alt text must be reviewed and edited for accuracy, context and accessibility before use. Please see the bottom of this article for more information.

Editors were also reminded to upload images to their department's designated image folder rather than the shared image library.

 

New Checked-Out Content Gadget

A new gadget allows editors to view and check in multiple checked-out pages at once, making it easier to release pages for other editors.

The gadget can be enabled through the Gadgets menu in Modern Campus.

 

New and Updated Components and Snippets

The team demonstrated several new features available to website editors:

  • Read More Reveal: Expand and collapse additional page content to reduce the amount of text initially displayed.

  • Animated Impact Numbers: Display statistics with animated numbers.

  • Shadowbox Overlay: Present additional information in a pop-up overlay without navigating away from the page.

  • Tabbed Content with Anchors: Link directly to individual tabs using URL anchors on the accordion component and snippet. Existing tabbed snippets must be replaced to use this enhancement.

  • Live Stream Banner: Promote livestream events with banners that can be scheduled to appear and disappear automatically.

 

Coming Soon: Departmental News Tool

The team previewed a new Modern Campus news publishing tool that will allow departments to create and manage their own news articles, announcements and blog posts directly within their websites.

Features include:

  • Dedicated news article and listing templates.

  • Category and year filters for browsing stories.

  • Automatic updates to departmental news listings.

  • Support for images, components and snippets within articles.

The tool is expected to launch following final enhancements and testing. Setup instructions and documentation will be announced through the Web Support broadcast channel.

 

Schema Markup for SEO and AI Optimization

The team introduced new structured data enhancements that help search engines and AI platforms better understand Stony Brook University's websites and content.

Topics included:

  • Automatic schema markup: University and departmental templates identify Stony Brook University, its official website and individual webpages.

  • Page-specific schema: Editors can select appropriate content types, such as news articles, events, faculty profiles and FAQ pages, through the SEO section of Page Properties.

  • FAQ schema: The Info Accordion component and snippet now support FAQ structured data to identify questions and answers.

  • Departmental information: Departments can request additional structured data connecting their websites with official social media profiles and other identifying information.

Editors were encouraged to select schema types that accurately reflect their content rather than applying unrelated categories. See more about schema options here.

 

Wrap-Up

The meeting concluded with questions about redirect best practices, legacy website cutovers, managing unpublished content, authentication for embedded forms, and reusing assets in the new CMS.

The team also discussed the importance of saving page versions, organizing assets with clear department-specific names, and reviewing unpublished pages ahead of planned sitewide republishing.