Community College of Rhode Island

Related Links

For Content Managers

For site owners

Web Publishing Guidelines & Requirements

Tutorials

Web Style Guide, Ch. 1

Usability.gov is a one-stop source for government web designers to learn how to make websites more usable, useful, and accessible.

Section 508: The Road to Accessibility

Rhode Island Accessibility Law

Creating Departmental Web Sites

A guide for Web site Owners and Content Managers

PLEASE NOTE: Because we are not yet at 100% completion in the conversion to a Content Management System (CMS) from a system which relied on the use of FrontPage 2003 to create and edit pages, the following guidelines may reference both the use of FrontPage and the CMS.

Most of the guidelines are not editing tool specific. The main difference in the new system is that content managers (CMs) will not need to use FrontPage and will be able to publish directly to the live server. [Learn more about the CMS]

The person who initiates the development of a Web site is considered its "owner". Web sites can only be initiated by a vice president, dean, department chair, or director. The Web site owner and the person who actually converts (develops) the supplied content into a Web-ready product are rarely the same person. The person who develops the Web site is known as its Content Manager or CM and is appointed by the site owner. (Site owners should see: Guidelines for the care and maintenance of your Content Manager .)

The following guidelines are for both the initiator/owner of the site and their CMs.

Before You Start

Read CCRI's Web publishing policies and Web Publishing Guidelines & Requirements before you begin the planning of your site. Refer back to these guidelines as you develop your web site.

Other great online resources for planning your web site can be found in the Web Style Guide, Ch. 1 and at the Usability.gov Web site, which is a one-stop source for government web designers to learn how to make websites more usable, useful, and accessible.

Web site Plan

Planning: The more time you spend planning your site before developing the web pages, the less time you will spend re-working the more time-consuming web development work. Content (text and images) can be developed and circulated for review and approval in a Word document. In fact, most people will find it easier to make changes or comments when it is in Word.

Discuss the information that you want to provide on the web site within your department/organization. Get everyone who will have a say after the site is built, involved before the site is built. For example, your department head should be involved in the planning stages of your web site; they should not be seeing it for the first time after it's already developed in to a web site. This early involvement of all participants in the process will result in much lighter revisions once you begin to develop the actual pages and circulate them for feedback.

Set up an initial meeting with Web Services to outline the information that you want to provide and any concerns or questions you may have.

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Web Publishing Policies

  1. Who may publish on the web site
    1. Pages linked to the CCRI home page and upper-level pages may be created by academic departments, administrative departments, college-sanctioned organizations or committees, and official student organizations.
    2. Faculty and staff may publish professional pages. The author bears full responsibility for the contents of these Web pages. For questions about faculty webs, Blackboard or WebCT contact the Instructional Support Team
    3. Each entity wishing to publish on the web is responsible for naming a Web Content Manager who will maintain that entity’s web pages. The Web Content Manager must be a full time CCRI employee or a permanent part-time employee. A vice president, dean, department chair, or director must approve the allocation of this responsibility.
  2. Web Content Managers (CM)
    1. A full-time (or permanent part-time) CCRI employee approved by a vice president, dean, department chair, or director
    2. Responsible for updating and maintaining the appointing organization's web pages using FrontPage 2003 (or the content management system if applicable).
  3. Publishing Requirements - Standards required for all department and organization site pages
  4. Publishing Guidelines - The contents of the site, including all department, organization and program sub-sites, should follow these guidelines:
    1. Date Stamps
      1. Web pages should contain a date stamp declaring the date of last revision to the page.
    2. Original Content
      1. Content Managers should publish original content, which can only be found on their site, and for which the department or organization is responsible.

        **IMPORTANT** Web pages that provide the reader with information on course offerings or descriptions should provide links to the online schedule and catalog information rather than duplicating it on their site. Duplication of catalog or online schedule information on organization, faculty or staff web sites is prohibited -per order of the President's Office.
    3. Academic Content
      1. To ensure appropriate protection, faculty should limit access to copyrighted content to only their enrolled students utilizing either MyCCRI course tools or Blackboard. Access should require authentication by enrolled students.
    4. Accessibility
      1. Web Content Managers must use the provided page templates (see Requirements). These templates are developed using best practices for information design, which comply with federal and state accessibility laws.  See:
        1. Federal: Section 508: The Road to Accessibility
        2. State: Rhode Island Government : Accessibility Policy
      2. Reasonable recommendations for additions to the templates and style sheets may be accommodated by contacting Web Services
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Appoint a Web Content Manager

Your department/organization/program head (a vice president, dean, department chair, or director) must designate a Web Content Manager (CM) to develop and coordinate your organization's content on the web and update the site using either the Content Management System (CMS) or FrontPage 2003.  An CM must be either a full time or permanent part-time CCRI employee (see Who may publish on the web site ).  A Vice President, Associate VP, Dean, Department Chair, or Director must approve the allocation of this responsibility to the nominated CM.

Please note: There can be many content providers for a site, (for example, writers, photographers, proofreaders, etc.), but there can only be one CM per organization*.  The CM will be trained in basic web development and editing using FrontPage 2003 (or the content management system if applicable) by Web Services, then given login access to your web site on the test server.  The Content Manager’s Agreement details the responsibilities of the CM. The appointed CM must complete the form and submit it online.

*On sites using the CMS, it will be possible to form "content management teams" for sites, thus helping to lighten the burden on one individual.

Cover of HTML, XHTML, and CSS: VQS

Content Manager Training

The CM whose site has not yet been converted to the CMS needs to be familiar with the FrontPage 2003 web authoring tool. If their site has been converted to the CMS, they will need to be trained on that and will not need to use FrontPage.  In either case, the CM will be trained on how to develop web documents on our test server (FrontPage) or our staging server (CMS) and get them published to the live server. Full-time or permanent part-time employees can obtain a copy of FrontPage 2003 from the help desk on the Knight Campus. The CM can register for training sessions offered by the Web Services division of Information Technology by e-mailing webservices@ccri.edu.

Front Page 2003 Tutorials are another resource which will support the CM's web development efforts.  We would also suggest your organization purchase a couple of good introductory books on XHTML and CSS. One we would recommend is, " HTML, XHTML, & CSS " by Elizabeth Castro (pictured on right).  There are many suggestions for books on web design on this Web site.

For those with CMS sites, please learn more about training here »

Developing your site

Once the department/organization has named a CM and the CM has had a brief preliminary training session regarding procedures for publishing to the CCRI web site, Web Services will create a Front Page/CMS web on the test/staging server where the CM can develop and test their web pages.

The organization's web site will contain page templates that include the CCRI style elements.  The CM must utilize these templates for page content.  To use the templates in FrontPage, see: Creating Web Pages from Templates. Instructions on creating pages from templates on the CMS can be found here.

Testing your site

To accurately test your Web site it must be previewed on the web, using a web browser*.  Do NOT use the "Preview" view tab in FrontPage to preview you pages --it is inaccurate and misleading. You need to see the pages the way your visitors will see them --in a browser, on the web.

*The CMS has a very accurate "browser" built into its previewing feature so that you can view pages before publishing them to the live server.

At this time (December 2011) the most popular browser, world-wide, is Internet Explorer 8, followed by Chrome 15, IE 9, IE 6, Firefox 8 and Firefox 3.6*.  Be sure you test your site with the browsers most frequently used by visitors to the CCRI site.  To view up-to-date world-wide stats on browser market share, see this site.

*You will need to use Firefox 3.6 or later when working in the CMS, which is a Web-based system but, you should be sure to view your pages after publishing, in IE 8, as well.

When editing with FrontPage, the easiest way to test a web page is to open its site in FrontPage, select, "File > Preview in Browser > Internet Explorer 8" from the FrontPage menu.  If you do not have Internet Explorer 8 on your machine, we recommend you do the following:

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Publishing your site

Contact Information
Jim Kirby
Manager, Internet Technologies, Design & Content
Sara Hill
Information Technologist, Web Services

Publishing requests should be sent to webservices@ccri.edu
Help Desk
Tel: 401-825-1112
helpdesk@ccri.edu
Web site»
Faculty Web
For questions about faculty webs, Blackboard or WebCT contact the:
Instructional Support Team

Once the test site has been developed and tested by the CM, on the web, in a browser, the web site address (URL) should be sent to anyone within the organization who must approve the content before it can be published to the live server.  Once tested and approved, the site can be published to the live CCRI web site.

In order to publish sites developed on test.ccri.edu using FrontPage, the CM sends email to Web Services including the root URL of the site, if the entire site is to be published, or the URLs of individual pages, if only those pages are to be published. The Web site manager then reviews the pages/site for compliance with the web publishing guidelines and either publishes the pages and sends a confirming e-mail back to the CM or provides the CM with feedback, if alterations are necessary before the pages/site can be published. For a detailed tutorial, see: How to Get Your Pages & Files Published .

In order to publish pages using the Content Management System, the CM and/or whoever has publishing permissions within the department, program or organization can publish their pages firectly to the live site without having to go through Web Services.

After the site is published to the production (live) web server, the pages/site is then accessible to the world via the WWW.

IMPORTANT! Upon receiving confirmation that the requested pages/site has been published, it is the CMs responsibility to immediately review those pages/site on the live server to ensure that all pages and related files and links are in working order. For tips about some common publishing pitfalls see: "Before you send the request to have your pages published..." on the How to Get Your Pages & Files Published page.

Special considerations when developing electronic forms

Whether the CM develops an electronic form or Web Services develops it for them, it is the CM's responsibility to test the form both prior to and after it has been published to the live server.

Depending on how the form is set-up, testing may include some or all of the following:

  • filling-out and submitting the form online
  • Reviewing the confirmation page online
  • Reviewing any e-mail sent to the CM (or others) from the form
  • Reviewing the spread sheet the form generates

Again, this testing must be done both before and after the form has been published. Just because it worked on the test server, does not guarantee it will work on the live server.

It is also the responsibility of the CM to request the download of any spread sheet generated by the form. The live spread sheet is not accessible to the CM directly --it must be downloaded, converted to an Excel file and saved in a "form-results" folder on your test site by Web Services. You may request the spread sheet to be downloaded on whatever timetable it's most useful to you: once at the end of the form's use or periodically during the life of the form; for example: the first of the month, every Friday, every morning, etc.

As implied above, many forms have a termination date.  It is the responsibility of the CM to follow-up with Web Services in order to remove or de-activate any forms which have a termination date affixed to them or to extend the original termination date.  This is important because the CM does not have access to the live server and cannot directly remove a form which is no longer wished to be active. 

Linking to your site from the CCRI home page or other top level pages

The Marketing & Communications Department determines which sites/pages should be linked to from the CCRI user index pages, e.g. For Students, College Directory, College Depts., etc. or receive temporary promotional links on the college home page. You may submit these type of requests to marketing@ccri.edu. Permanent links on the aforementioned pages are reserved for the most frequently visited and/or requested areas of our site, as determined by the web site stats.

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Ongoing Maintenance

The CM maintains web content in the departmental web in a timely fashion and reviews all changes made to pages by viewing them on the live site after they are published.

The CM e-mails Web Services with a specific list of files that have been changed and the Web Site Manager publishes these files to the production web server.

The CM should notify Marketing & Communications at marketing@ccri.edu  about significant new content that may be considered as features on the college's home page.

Important: Removing files from your live site. Simply removing a link to a file on a given page and republishing the page does not make the formerly linked file inaccessible by visitors to our site. Since any file on the live server can be found via search engine, it is the responsibility of the CM to periodically request that obsolete files be removed from the live server.  This can be done a number of ways:

  • On the test site, mark any files which you wish to remove from the live server "Don't publish" and request that the entire site be republished.
  • On the test site, mark any files which you wish to remove from the live server "Don't publish" and request that Web Services remove these same files from the live server.
  • On the test site, mark any files which you wish to remove from the live server "Don't publish" and send an e-mail to Web Services with the URL(s) of the files you want removed from the live server.
  • Important: When removing an HTML file, be sure to also remove any files which are referenced in that HTML page, such as images, audio and video files, etc. UNLESS these referenced files are also being referenced from another page which isn't being deleted. 
    • You can check this in the "Hyperlinks" view in FrontPage.  In the screen shot below, pages or files linking TO the file in the middle, (the file which is selected in the "Folder List"), are shown to the left of the selected file:



      If there are no files to the left of the selected file, then it is not being used by any other page, (a.k.a. an "orphan") and can be marked "Don't publish" and requested to be removed from the live server.
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Last Updated: 1/26/12