April 4, 2022
This announcement contains updates related to 2022 Open Berkeley rate increases and platform roadmap.
Open Berkeley Rate Increase after July 1
- Open Berkeley maintenance/support rates will increase in the new fiscal year from $107/month to $110/month.
- This means that after July 1, 2022, the total cost of your Open Berkeley site (per month) will be $110 + the rate of your Pantheon hosting plan(link is external).
Platform Roadmap
- We are developing the next generation of our platform, which will be on Drupal 9 or later.
- Our current Open Berkeley platform is based on Drupal 7, which will continue to be supported by the Drupal community until Nov. 1, 2023 or later(link is external).
- We will continue to support the current version with security updates, bug fixes, and enhancements until all sites are on the new platform.
- Our current development will focus on our next-gen version, so we will not be developing new features for the current version unless there are special exceptions.
- If you have a sponsored feature request, please email us at web-platform@berkeley.edu(link sends e-mail) so that we can determine if the request qualifies as a special exception.
- Our platform roadmap includes a plan for upgrading existing Open Berkeley sites and their content. We do not yet know what actions will be required from our customers during the process.
- At this point, we have no plans to charge extra for the upgrade for any existing sites. If this changes, we will communicate with our site owners/customers.
- Once the new version of our platform is available, we plan to use the same rate schedule as we do for the current version. If there are changes to hosting costs or our monthly maintenance rate, those changes will apply to both versions.
Campus Accessibility Project
- Disability Access and Compliance(link is external) and Berkeley IT(link is external) are about to embark on a three-year Accessibility Project that will ensure campus websites (beginning with the top 200 most visited sites) and videos are accessible to people with disabilities.
- To find out what to expect in the coming months and years, we encourage campus site owners and their teams to attend the upcoming Webnet meeting on April 5th; register for the Zoom meeting on the Webnet page(link is external).
- Accessibility is built into the Open Berkeley platform, so our team handles all the technical aspects of ensuring the platform is accessible. The platform is regularly tested for accessibility, and any new features are vetted for accessibility before they are deployed. However:
- Content creators (Contributors, Editors, and Site Builders) on Open Berkeley sites are responsible for ensuring the accessibility of the content they feature on their sites, including text, images, audio and video, and widget content.
- We encourage site owners and builders to enroll in Siteimprove and visit our Using Siteimprove on an Open Berkeley site guide to identify and fix accessibility issues related to your site’s content.
Our Web Platform Services team (the Open Berkeley team) continues to support institutional requirements(link is external) by providing a platform that complies with campus and UC-wide policies for Berkeley.edu websites (privacy, brand protection, security, and accessibility).
If you have any questions, please email web-platform@berkeley.edu(link sends e-mail), or join us at a training or office hours session.