Cascade Refresh v7: What's Improved?
A refreshed Carnegie Mellon web experience
The Cascade v7 Refresh brings a more modern, accessible and consistent experience to Carnegie Mellon's websites while preserving the content and individuality of each site.
This is more than a visual update. Our Web Strategy team has made improvements to how websites look, function and adapt to different devices, along with improvements behind the scenes.
If you're ready to move forward with upgrading to v7, learn about next steps to publishing.
A More Consistent CMU Experience
Updated Brand Standards
- Refreshed typography, colors and visual styling aligned with CMU's updated web design
- More consistent university headers, footers, navigation and page layouts
- Streamlined color and component options for a cohesive look across university websites
Improved Accessibility and Heading Structure
- A more intentional heading hierarchy, with the page title serving as the primary H1
- Updated heading styles and content organization to improve readability and support accessibility
- Clearer interactive elements, including buttons, links and expandable content
Better Responsive Design
- Updated layouts that adapt more consistently to desktops, tablets and mobile devices
- Improved spacing, image presentation and content stacking on smaller screens
- Refreshed grids, cards and sidebars for a more consistent experience across screen sizes
Refreshed header and navigation space, sidebar, and H1 styling
Updated universal footer
New expandable component styling
Refreshed Website Components
Modernized Visual Elements
- Updated heroes, image rotators and visual content areas
- Refreshed grids, cards, accordions and link styles
- More consistent layouts for Bio, Course and News pages and their corresponding indexes
Improved Content Organization
- Updated category and tagging options for organizing website content
- Refreshed Bio, Course, and News Index filtering
- Support for pre-filters and visitor-facing dropdowns to help people find relevant content
Some category and filtering settings may require reconfiguration as part of the transition.
Updated CTA link styling
Refreshed RSS News Grid layout and styling
Improvements Behind the Scenes
A Cleaner Editing Experience
- More consistent formatting options within Cascade's WYSIWYG editor
- Simplified component and style choices to help maintain CMU's brand standards
- More predictable page layouts and reusable content components
More Efficient Publishing
- Streamlined supporting assets and publishing workflows
- Reduced processing overhead through updates to shared components and scripts
- Improvements intended to shorten publishing times, with actual savings varying by site
What This Means For Your Site
You can review your website's updated appearance now without affecting your live site. Continue making your regular content updates as usual.
Once you're comfortable with the refreshed design, let us know you're ready to move forward.
The Web Strategy team will then:
- Take a fresh copy of your current Production site to capture any content updates made since the original preview.
- Prepare that latest content with the v7 design in the Production CMS.
- Make the refreshed site available for you to complete any final content updates.
- Coordinate a date to publish the refreshed design to your live website.
Approving the preview does not change your live website. Your public launch will be scheduled separately, allowing you to review and prepare your content before the transition.