A broad effort is underway to shift more than 150 WordPress websites maintained within the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences to the Mercury theme developed by the Office of Strategic Communications and Marketing along with UF Information Technology.
This has several advantages over the legacy Emily theme that was created for CLAS in 2017 and now is a patchwork of outdated code that is not easily supported.
These benefits include:
- Better user experience, especially on smaller screens;
- Visual consistency with ufl.edu sites, including other colleges across the university;
- Opportunity, within limits, to identify and remove outdated or dead pages;
- Support for continued code development and updates; and
- Compliance with federal accessibility requirements.
The Mercury theme has been designed with more than 50 modular elements. This variety offers options for text — such as headlines, quotes and facts — and assets — such as photos, video, PDFs and iFrame embeds.
Some CLAS units already have moved to the Mercury theme, including Beyond120. Others will begin migrating over the 2025-26 academic year, with a projected timeline for full adoption by the close of 2026.
Suzie Israel, web manager for the CLAS Office of Communications and Media Services, is leading the effort, with support from OPS web assistant Ronit Singh. Suzie and Ronit will consult with units on their specific needs when the time comes for moving their sites to the Mercury theme.