SIUE Web Guidelines
- Purpose
- Roles and Responsibilities
- The University Web site has six sections
- URL Design
- Rules and Regulations
Purpose
The purpose of the Web guidelines is to ensure consistency and provide direction for the advancement of Web development within the University. All University Web pages must adhere to these guidelines.
SIUE's Web site represents the University within the context of the World Wide Web. All pages must be 1) easily accessed, 2) intuitive to use, 3) timely in their content, and 4) complimentary to the image of the University. While comprehensive in content, the Web site should be dynamic, both in content and style, and evolve continuously.
back to top
Roles and Responsibilities
Marketing and Communications is responsible for the direction, navigation, and overall look and feel of the entire University Web site including the University's home page. The Office of Information Technology, along with the Faculty Technology Center (OIT/LIS-FTC), is responsible for the template development, system administration, maintenance, technical support, and training in regard to the use of the Luminis Content Management System (CMS) and technology. The College, Schools, Enrollment Management, Student Affairs, Athletics and the Library must have a designated content manager who will be responsible for developing and/or managing content for their site area. All content managers along with OIT/LIS-FTC will have a dotted-line relationship, working cooperatively with the Interactive Media manager within the Marketing and Communications department.
The University Web site has six sections
The Institutional Site; Major Sites, Academic Sites; Administrative Sites; Organization Sites; and Personal Sites. The Institutional Site, Major Sites, and Academic Sites must fall within the Luminis Content Management System (LCMS). All Administrative Sites are encouraged but not required to utilize the LCMS. Support for web development will only be given to those sites that fall within the LCMS. All sites that fall under the LCMS must follow a navigational/design layout as outlined by Marketing and Communications. The direction for any sites that do not fall within the following six sections will be determined by Marketing and Communications on an individual basis.
The Institutional Site
The Institutional site includes the University top-level pages and Admissions. The following elements are required on all Institutional site pages:
- University wordmark (with a link back to www.siue.edu);
- Search
- About SIUE
- Contact SIUE
- Apply Now!
- Maps & Directions
- A-Z index
- Academics
- Calendars & Events
- SIUE News
Major Sites
The Major Sites for Web purposes consist of the following: Enrollment Management (Housing, Registrar, Financial Aid, and Career Development), Student Affairs, Athletics and the Lovejoy Library. The following elements are required on all Major site pages:
- University wordmark (with a link back to www.siue.edu)
- Site name (with a link back to their respective home page)
- Search (TBA)
- About Us
- General Information
- About SIUE (www.siue.edu/about)
- Contact Us
Academic Sites
Academic Sites include: The College, Schools and their respective academic departments; and Graduate Studies and Research. The following elements are required on all Academic site pages:
College and School Navigation:
- University wordmark (with a link back to www.siue.edu)
- Site name (with a link back to their respective home page)
- Search (TBA)
- About Us
- General Information
- About SIUE (www.siue.edu/about)
- Accreditation
- Contact Us
- Departments
- Programs
- News
- Calendar & Events
Department Navigation:
(Must follow same design as respective College or School):
- University wordmark (with a link back to www.siue.edu)
- Site name (with a link back to their respective home page)
- About Us
- General Information
- About the (School or College, ex. About the School of Education)
- Faculty & Staff
- Contact Us
- Programs
- Undergraduate
- Graduate
Administrative Sites
Administrative Sites have no navigational/design rules with the exception of the following required elements:
- University wordmark (with a link back to www.siue.edu)
- Site name (with a link back to their respective home page)
- About Us
- General Information
- About SIUE (www.siue.edu/about)
- Hours of Operation
- Contact Us
Organization Sites
Organization Sites consist of the following: Student Organizations and University Affiliated Organizations.
- Student Organizations: Home pages for student organizations requesting their own Web directory must be approved by a faculty or staff adviser and approved by the Director (or designee) of the Kimmel Leadership Center. The adviser is responsible for the student organization's Web content and for managing the special account for the site. Student organization pages residing within a department's existing Web directory structure and maintained by that academic or administrative unit's Web administrator may request linkage from the Student Organizations home page without prior approval of the Kimmel Leadership Center.
- University-Affiliated Organizations: University-affiliated organization Web sites may be hosted on the SIUE server at the discretion of Marketing and Communications. All affiliated organization Web site hosting must reside on the University servers with a University related URL (www.siue.edu). In addition, all University-affiliated organization Web sites must be monitored by the appropriate site manager. For not-for-profit Web sites, an officer of that organization must be employed by SIUE. Once approved, not-for-profit sites will be hosted only for the length of time during which the employee is serving in the capacity of an officer of that organization.
Personal Sites
SIUE faculty, staff, and enrolled students may have personal home pages which may be referenced through the online directory search results. Such home pages are subject to these guidelines, but do not represent the University or any unit(s) within it. Personal home pages may not contain any symbol of or reference to the University other than employment and/or student status and the URL (http:/www.siue.edu/~username). The following element is required on all personal Web sites.
- Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this page are strictly those of the page author. The contents of this page have not been reviewed or approved by SIUE.
URL Design
All URL naming conventions for the six site sections will be determined by Marketing and Communications. The College, Schools and Major Sites will have a directory off the Institutional Site (www.siue.edu/foo), and all academic departments must fall within the directory of their respective College and/or Schools (www.siue.edu/foo/foo).
URLs off the Institutional Site (www.siue.edu/foo) may be requested for a limited-time event and/or activity only. This and all other root level URL requests may be made to Marketing & Communications at their discretion. This limited-time directory will only last as long as the event and/or activity. Please use these URL design guidelines for reference to ensure consistency:
- All urls will be lower-case. No mixed cases are to be used.
- All urls will be as short as possible with only a two-word maximum. The main recommendation is to run the words together when dealing with 2 reasonably short and easy-to-spell words. If the url in question is 2 words but the first word can act alone use just one word.
- Try not to use abbreviations for URLs as this will cause confusion to outside audiences. Abbreviations may work as an alternative for 3 or more words or when the result of running two words together would be very long and/or difficult to spell. However, as always the main recommendation is to run the words together.
- All urls will avoid special characters (anything but letters and digits) as far as possible. If for some reason there is a need to use a special character, only underscores will be used, no hyphens. This is to ensure consistency.
- Only use common natural language words as much as possible because users normally know how to spell these words.
Tips: It is difficult to use a 0 (zero) or an O (upper-case o) in URLs because users often confuse the two. The lowercase o is less of a problem.
back to top
Rules and Regulations
- Individuals are responsible for their respective Web sites and agree to comply with applicable federal, state, and local laws; ordinances or regulations, including copyright and licensing; and obscenity laws. Individuals also agree to abide by the terms of the Electronic Information Systems Privacy Policy (as adapted from Policies of the SIU Board of Trustees, Chapter 5, Section J). Individuals must agree to indemnify and hold harmless the Board of Trustees of Southern Illinois University, its agents, employees, and representatives from any and all liabilities arising out of the information submitted by the individual and any other use of the system by the individual.
- Copyright laws apply to electronic publishing as well as to print publishing. Home page owners must have permission to publish the information, graphics, or photographs on a page if they are not the author or creator.
- Inclusion of personal addresses, telephone numbers, etc., on Web pages may not violate the right to privacy for those individuals who have specifically indicated that their directory information is not to be made public. Therefore, photographs or personal information about an individual may not be included without the express permission of the individual. Inclusion of personal information should be carefully weighed against personal safety issues, particularly with regard to student organization Web sites.
- Web pages are expected to conform to general socially acceptable principles of taste, civility, and decency and to serve the University's best interests.
- All page owners are responsible for keeping their Web directory and their home pages up-to-date by reviewing and revising home pages at least each academic year and removing old content from the server immediately. Directories may not contain content which is not actually linked from the unit's home page. Page owners will be notified by the Web Administrator when their site has been found to contain information that is out-of-date. Upon receipt of such notification, page owners will be given 30 days to bring their site up-to-date and/or remove old content from the server. Sites not brought up to date within 30 days will be subject to deletion.
- The use of the home page to promote a business or organization not associated with the University or approved by the University is prohibited.
- Information and/or actual Web content from another University department may be incorporated into a department or student organization Web site only via links to the Web site of the department responsible for said authoritative content. At no time are application forms, policies, or other authoritative content documents to be copied to another directory for incorporation into another department's Web site.
- Redirects for Web sites that have been moved will be permitted to sit on the server for up to one year, after which time the old directory and its contents shall be removed from the server.
- All Web sites must meet the Illinois Web Accessibility Standards http://www.illinois.gov/iwas/. Tools for checking the accessibility of Web sites can be found at: http://fae.cita.uiuc.edu.
- All Web sites must comply with the SIUE Campus Web Privacy Policy.
- In the event that Web pages fail to meet these guidelines, such Web pages will be disabled by the Web Administrator on behalf of Marketing and Communications. Appeal of such action may be made to the Vice Chancellor for University Relations.