And just like that, May is over! It’s been another busy month, and with some of the team on annual leave, we’ve all been working overtime to publish content from the backlog of evidence reports to guidance notes.

Writing web content

This week, we’ve been busy writing web content and organising the translation of content to ensure an equal experience for users accessing our services bilingually.

We now send content onto the translation team once the content has been finalised, which allows us to make any edits needed ahead of setting it live to the wider public.

We’ve been writing about heat exchangers, creating gateway pages for marine and publishing guidance for developers. Check out our guidance for writing for the web if you would like to familiarise yourself with the guidelines for publishing online.

The variety of content keeps our day interesting, but with so many content types and topics floating around, it’s more important than ever to send in clear requests that state the webpage where updates are needed, and the changes highlighted or tracked in a Word document using tracked changes.

The more time you spend making sure your request is clear, the quicker we can complete it. So as always, please double-check your request before you submit to ensure it’s as clear as it can be.

Fun with forms

This week, Andrew completed final amendments to the Dee catch form for cockle fishing crew.

The amended form is now going to be completed weekly as opposed to daily. It also limits the catch days to three a week with fewer landing locations to keep an eye on any potential illegal fishing taking place.

This change also reflects the need to protect cockle beds from being overfished. The web page will also be amended accordingly to communicate the changes in form.

Search functionality

As part of the upgrade work to Umbraco, the search functionality had to be rebuilt. This has given us a chance to rework the search results that are returned. From using the top ten search results of the website, we had reviewed the rules that had been put in place and reworked these to:

  • Only search the page title and page subtitle
  • Increased the fuzziness
  • Set a higher score for the results to be displayed
  • De-weighted news articles

We then checked the results of the changes to the live site to get the results as close as possible. There is still more to be done on the search functionality to improve the search results.

Sam went hazardous again

Around NRW, conversations resurfaced around hazardous waste returns: spreadsheets, macros, XML, demands on staff, duplication of effort, room for error.

Sam spent time trying to find out about any new problems for users: was there something we could do with content that could help?

After several chats and demos, we think that the same circumstances exist now as were there during the 2021 hazardous waste returns discovery. Users can and do send us the information we need, but the problem is internal: NRW can’t reliably and easily transfer it to our internal systems. So, a fix is needed, but not around content (at least for now).

Other things we’ve been working on:

  • We’ve been on the receiving end of some bugs and glitches this week, so Owain and Lucinda have been busy investigating matters and finding solutions.

  • Sam’s been working on last minute content from the grant team to get a new grant window open on time.

  • Sophie’s been busy updating broken links across the website and Intranet, with help from the wider NRW team, who have been kindly sharing instances of broken links when they find them.

  • We’re been hard at work updating tables to make sure they are accessible. This means removing merged cells, filling in empty ones and making sure the header row is set so that people using screen readers are taken through the content in a logical manner.

  • This week, we’ve also progressed a number of Forest Resource Plans to get these live on the website as soon as we can.

We hope you have a wonderful weekend!