It is time to reimplement MyWellesley! The platform we are using now for MyWellesley is called Luminis and is supported by Ellucian, the company that also supports Banner. The version of Luminis we are currently running is no longer supported and the version of operating system that it is running on cannot be upgraded without upgrading Luminis. Running unsupported versions of an operating system is a security risk.
Upgrading Luminis is both technically challenging, time consuming, and expensive; several other colleges and universities are also moving to alternatives. We explored several options and decided to build the next version of MyWellesley on Drupal. We started using Drupal for the College website 3 years ago, and it has served us extremely well. It is open source software, used by hundreds of thousands of websites including the White House and many higher ed institutions. LTS staff have gained expertise in Drupal so we are able to develop and readily support this platform. Like the college website, the new MyWellesley will be running in the cloud, hosted by Acquia. We’ve enjoyed continuous uptimes during regular upgrades through Acquia, who has also been quick to respond to any security vulnerabilities. Because Drupal is so widely used and developed for, we expect to review and improve functionality in the portal over time.
Our plan is to phase out the Luminis version of MyWellesley sometime during the middle of Spring semester, so we will be pre-releasing a version to the community for everyone to try out; you will see a link to the new MyWellesley in the current MyWellesley soon. The existing MyWellesley portal will continue to be available until we announce a date for its retirement. The initial version of the new portal will simply recreate the portal as it exists now — users should notice very little difference in features and functionality. However, some functionality may not work exactly the same in the first version. For a few systems, you may need to enter your login credentials a second time. This will be solved by the time we are ready to move to the new portal.
As we move forward, we anticipate using the features of Drupal to make the new portal even more useful to the community.
To: Faculty, students, staff
From, more info: Veronica Brandstrader, LTS, x2171
