Web Team 2025 Wrapped

Posted in The Cache

December 2025

As 2025 winds down and we trade sprint boards for holiday cheer and well-deserved rest, it’s the perfect moment to look back on everything the Web Team has accomplished.  And truly, this year has been one of the most transformative yet.

This was the year we leaned fully into DevOps modernization, accelerated deployments, and finally confronted technical debt that had been aging like a stubborn fruitcake on the top shelf. The results have reshaped how we work.

2025 by the Numbers

A quick look at the volume and impact of our work:

  • 54 site launches
  • 40 new sandbox sites created for experimentation and early-stage development
  • 1,470 help desk tickets handled with improved tagging, triage, and communication processes

This reflects both the breadth of our support and the ongoing trust placed in our team by campus partners.

High Impact Releases

This year we made substantial progress modernizing Georgetown’s highest-profile digital properties.

Work included:

  • Launching a new Capitol Campus website with additional features and blocks.
  • Transitioning the School of Foreign Service flagship site into our newer, more secure, more scalable codebase
  • The new MarTech Theme – Delivered on time and in scope, enabling more flexible, consistent, and modern marketing experiences.
  • Expanding functionality based on evolving university needs
  • Bringing Full Site Editing best practices into legacy WordPress themes
  • Ensuring improved accessibility throughout redesigns and migrations

These updates strengthen the foundation of Georgetown’s web presence and set the stage for more resilient digital experiences.

Major DevOps Improvements

This year brought some of the most transformative DevOps advancements our platform has ever seen.

Deployment Time Improvements

  • Deploying to Dev for individual sites: 75 minutes → ~5 minutes
  • Deploying to Test and Live: 45 minutes → ~5 minutes
  • Network cache clearing (~600 sites): 45 minutes → <5 minutes
  • Backups: 1 hour → <10 minutes

These gains came from our updated GUWP structures, parallelized commands, and the systematic removal of outdated build steps. With builds now shifting into GitHub Actions, we’re eliminating local waiting time entirely and increasing overall consistency.

Technical Debt Reduction

A major priority this year was resolving long-standing technical debt, including components and processes more than five years old.

This work improved reliability, reduced deployment friction, strengthened security, and increased the maintainability of our WordPress environment across more than 500 sites.

Internal Process & Tooling Enhancements

To support our team and improve coordination:

  • We successfully transitioned from Trello to Jira, establishing workflows that match our operational needs
  • We refined help desk tagging, triage processes, and timing expectations
  • We customized internal tooling to support clearer communication, better sprint planning, and stronger cross-functional alignment

These changes have already improved clarity, predictability, and efficiency across our workstreams.

Looking Ahead

2025 was a year of meaningful progress including faster deployments, modernized infrastructure, major site launches, cleaner processes, and deeper cross-campus alignment.
Thank you to every member of the team and our partners for the creativity, dedication, patience, and problem-solving spirit that made these achievements possible.

Here’s to a strong, scalable, and collaborative 2026!

WordPress and Accessibility Office Hours

We will continue to hold both Web Accessibility and WordPress office hours every Tuesday afternoon over Zoom throughout the year.

WordPress office hours appointments are every Tuesday, 2:30-3:30 p.m. via Zoom. You can sign up for an appointment slot (for any future office hours date!) here. Please note that we are unable to accommodate unscheduled appointments. If you are currently experiencing an issue outside of office hours or wish to submit a feature request, please use this form to capture that information.  

Web Accessibility office hours are every Tuesday, 2-3 p.m. via Zoom. You can talk through accessibility-related questions with Kevin Andrews, electronic and information technology accessibility coordinator. Please schedule a web accessibility office hours appointment here.