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Department and Offices > Computing Services > Policies

Policies & Procedures for Web Page Creation and Maintenance

Updated: Sept 14, 2007

Request for Web Site Updates & Additions Form [pdf]

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POLICIES

DEFINITION

The Finger Lakes Community College web site is located at http://www.flcc.edu. From the FLCC home page, web site visitors are able to access a menu of links to information resources and services offered by the college.

Content Manager: Is an individual or team that provides, organizes and maintains Web site content for the FLCC site. A content manager may work directly with the Coordinator of Web-based materials or use a content management system to edit sections of the FLCC Web site.

RESPONSIBILITY

The Coordinator of Web-Based Materials manages all documents accessible on the Finger Lakes Community College web sites. Individual offices and departments are considered the Content Managers and supply the informational content on these pages. It is the responsibility of these departments to provide up-to-date and appropriate information representing their department and the services they offer.

The Electronic Publications Advisory Group reviews and approves policies related to the publication of content on FLCC Web site at www.flcc.edu.

All textual and graphic content must be approved by the College Officer who oversees the specific area submitting updates/additions for the FLCC web site. Use the Request for Web site Updates & Additions form for requesting your College Officer’s approval and submitting material to the Coordinator of Web-Based Materials. The Coordinator of Web-based Materials and/or the Electronic Publications Group may seek input on accuracy and grammar, etc from other College offices. The Coordinator of Web-Based Materials and/or the Electronic Publications Advisory Group reserves the right to delay the publishing of content on the FLCC web site until appropriate review and approval has been obtained.

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ELIGIBLE LINKS TO WEB-BASED RESOURCES
 The linking to documents that provide detailed information and resources to the college community is essential to making a web site visitors experience complete.

Web site links will be provided for:

  • Links internally from one section of the FLCC web site to another related section.
  • Links to web sites of organizations that provide content essential to the day-to-day functions of the college and provide information essential to web site visitors.
  • Links to public or private organizations if these organizations offer services that complement the information or services offered by FLCC.

All hyperlinks must be approved by the College Officer who oversees the specific area submitting updates/additions for the FLCC web site. It is also the responsibility of the Content Manager to routinely monitor the hyperlink to verify that the link is still appropriate for usage on the FLCC Web site. Use the Request for Web site Updates & Additions form for requesting your College Officer’s approval when submitting new or updated hyperlinks to the Coordinator of Web-Based Materials.

The Coordinator of Web-based Materials may remove hyperlinks from the FLCC Web site when a link becomes broken, out of date, or no longer links to an appropriate Web resource. The Coordinator of Web-based Materials will contact the Content Manager/College Officer when links are removed in these cases.

FLCC does not endorse any commercial products, services or Web sites via links to externally located web pages or any other Internet based service.

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GRAPHICS

Graphics may include photos, illustrations, charts, drawings, etc.

The majority of the photography currently on the FLCC Web site is maintained and selected by the Office of College Relations. The Office of College Relations works directly with the Coordinator of Web-based Materials to routinely update the photographic images on the Web site. The focus of these routine photographic updates is to provide an up-to-date Web site with a common design across all Web pages located at www.flcc.edu.

The following guidelines must be followed by individuals, departments, and organizations who desire to post graphics to the FLCC Web site that are not owned or managed by the Office of College Relations.

Permission to Publish Graphics
 The individual, department/organization who submits graphic files to the Coordinator of Web-based Materials for Web site posting is responsible for obtaining permission from the graphic owner before it is made available on the FLCC Web site. The individual, department/organization submitting graphic files are also responsible for obtaining the permission of all those pictured in a graphic and/or the permission of any identifiable components within the image that may be trademarked, copywritten, etc.

Approval
 Prior to graphics being made available on the FLCC Web site, all graphics must be approved by the College Officer who oversees your departmental or organizational Web pages. In addition, should you have photos that include current students as subjects (where a photograph focuses on a single or small group of students) you should submit the names of students to the Dean of Student Services Office to review records of photographed students.

Submitting Graphics/Acceptable Formats
For graphical content, all files must be saved in GIF or JPEG format. GIF format is for low color drawings, graphs, illustrations. JPG format is most commonly used for photographic images. After graphics are submitted to the Coordinator of Web-based Materials, any final graphic optimization will take place such as sizing changes or image compression to accommodate the FLCC Web site format and to allow for fast download times. All attempts will be made to preserve graphic quality, but not all images are appropriate for delivery via Web pages. Should an image be identified as not being suitable for use in a page template, the Coordinator of Web-based Materials reserves the right to not post graphics of poor quality.

Accessibility
To meet Web accessibility standards, all images imbedded in a Web page must include what is called an ALT=“image description’’ tag. This tag provides information to screen reading software describing the contents of the image when viewing of the actual image is not possible. This description is also viewable when a mouse pointer is placed over an image in a standard Web browser. ALT=”image descriptions” should be submitted in a document that identifies the graphic by file name along with the corresponding text.

Web Page Design/Layout
The actual import of graphic content into FLCC page templates is implemented on a case by case basis. There are several methods and techniques that can be used to share graphical content via the World Wide Web. You should work directly with the Coordinator of Web-based materials to establish a Web page template that will identify the location, format, dimensions and number of images that can be made available. This template will be used as the accepted format for submitted graphics.

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PROCEDURES

There are a great number of different software packages and technologies used to create web pages and deliver informational content over the World Wide Web. In most cases, the development of new web page material and web sites should be a collaborative process that involves the Coordinator of Web-Based Materials and the department wishing to produce new web page content.

Initially, to begin the process of creating web pages, a course of action will be developed to facilitate collaboration between all parties involved in the web page/site project. See the section “Basic Steps for Web Site/ Page Creation and Modification Creating and Modifying Web Pages” for information on the development process. Collaboration with the Coordinator of Web-Based Materials will significantly ease the production and development process.

ELECTRONIC SUBMISSIONS AND FORMATS

In order to reduce the time needed to produce online documents, it is required that all additions and modifications be submitted in an electronic format. Electronic submission of content means delivering information to the Coordinator of Web-Based Materials on 3.5” diskette, CD, Zip disk or attached to an e-mail. Electronic formats that are acceptable for text-based content are files saved in text format (.txt), rich text format (.rtf), and Microsoft Word (PC format) (.doc). In some cases, Adobe Acrobat format (.pdf) may be acceptable as well.

If you have data in a different file format or have questions about what would be the appropriate format to deliver content, contact the Coordinator of Web-Based Materials.

CREATING AND MODIFYING WEB PAGES

Most web site projects fall into three categories; updates to existing web pages, large site updates, and the creation of new web page documents. Large updates should follow the “ Basic Steps for Web Site/ Page Creation and Modification Creating and Modifying Web Pages” guidelines. Below are the points that should be reviewed prior to starting each type of project.

Small Updates to Existing Web Pages
To make small updates to existing documents on the Finger Lakes Community College web site, (for example, changes of a date, department contact, phone extension, or email address) please print a copy of your web page and mark your text and graphic changes on it * . Please note that if these changes are longer than 2-3 sentences the “Electronic Submission and Formats” guidelines listed above should be followed.

After you have marked your changes or small additions, submit the edited print-out along with a completed Request for Web site Updates & Additions form to your College Officer for approval. Once your College Officer approves the update, forward the printed changes and routing form to the Coordinator of Web-Based Materials located in D-356. The Coordinator of Web-Based Materials will make the required changes and contact you so that you have a chance to review changes prior to publishing the updates to the FLCC web site. Upon your approval, the pages containing your updates will be posted to the web site.

* Exceptions are for any downloadable documents, such as Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) files or printable forms that are available on the FLCC web sites. In order to update these files, the entire updated document must be submitted for re-posting.

New Web-Based Information and Large Site Updates
 The creation of new web pages and other documents involves numerous steps to integrate with the existing sections of the Finger Lakes Community College Web Sites. These steps may include and not be limited to: The creation of new links from existing pages; the adaptation to a FLCC template that resembles the FLCC branding of online documents; editing the information of other sections of the site to accommodate new information; training personnel that will be using online applications associated with web pages; and modifying the content to meet web content accessibility standards required by the State University of New York and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

BASIC STEPS FOR WEB SITE/PAGE CREATION AND MODIFICATION

The steps required for site updates varies greatly from department to department. In many cases, short meetings and e-mail correspondence is efficient in communicating most information needed throughout a project. Below are the basic steps followed for the majority of the projects carried out on the Finger Lakes Community College web sites.

  1. Contact the Coordinator of Web-Based Materials to set up an initial meeting to discuss the scope of the project and put together a time-line leading up to the posting of the web page documents.
  2. Either during the first meeting or shortly after, a rough web navigation map/outline will be drafted to illustrate the structure of the web pages/site to be developed.
  3. After review and approval of the web navigation map/outline, the Coordinator of Web-Based Materials will request all materials in electronic format needed to begin web page creation.
  4. The Content Manager organizes all content to be submitted to the Coordinator of Web-Based Materials. The content manager then submits all content along with a Request for Web site Updates & Additions form to their College Officer for approval.
  5. The Coordinator of Web-Based Materials will prepare a folder for all content submitted.
  6. All submitted information will be evaluated and the conversion into web page format will begin. A revision to the rough web navigation map/outline may be required during this step.
  7. Once content is moved into the new web page templates, The Coordinator of Web-Based Materials, will request a review of the newly created web documents. Usually, the review request is made and confirmed via e-mail. At this time, a temporary web page address will be provided so that all parties involved in the project can review completed work online using an Internet browser.
  8. Revisions to draft pages will be made and the review process of step 6 will be revisited.
  9. If necessary, training for any web-based applications that will be maintained by a department or office other than the Institutional Computing will be provided.
  10. Upon completion of revisions or training , the new web documents/site are posted to the Finger Lakes Community College web site. A confirmation e-mail will be sent to the Content Manager and the College Officer representing the department for the project.