Annual Website Checklist

• Add new events or news articles as needed and update the homepage to reflect those changes. Be sure to use thumbnail images!
• Check the shared content feed and import pertinent news and events to your site. 
• Remove any outdated events from the header slideshow. (Events that have passed will not automatically come down from the slideshow.)
• Close RSVPs to webforms once an event has passed to reduce spam. 
• Ensure dates are accurate (due dates, apply by dates, etc.).

• Review Siteimprove to fix any misspellings, broken links, or accessibility issues. 

• Download web form data and clear it from web forms. (This makes managing the data easier for you and ensures you have a saved archive of all form submissions from the past.)
• Email the web team with the names of anyone with a login to your website who has left your employment so that account can be disabled. (This is especially important in the case of student workers. We know you trust those people, and we do too, but it is a good practice to disable their logins when they no longer work for the department.)

• Ask all employees to send any updated information they would like included on their profiles.
• When an employee leaves the department:
  • Ensure contact information on webforms and "Contact Us" links is accurate.
  • Sciences: Ensure all laboratory information is accurate and update if a faculty member has left the university.
  • Unpublish associated profile pages.
• Add any new faculty books to the faculty bookshelf.
• Mid-May: If the department doesn't have many upcoming events for summer, temporarily remove the upcoming events scroller section from the homepage.
• Update all pages and forms with any departmental or programmatic name changes.

• ​​​​​​Refresh the "About the Department" text.
• Update Undergraduate and Graduate Program pages.
  • Update major, minor, or graduate program requirements.
  • Update Career Outcome Data (percentages, internship titles, job titles, and graduate school placements) on the Undergraduate page with new three-year data set from the Career Center.
• Review social media accounts; ensure they are still active and update them on the webpage accordingly.
• July 1:Update "Our People."
  • Add new faculty members and schedule portrait sessions for them.
  • Unpublish retiring faculty members.
  • Update faculty titles.
  • Update the Department Chair.
  • Update "Director of Undergraduate Studies" and "Director of Graduate Studies" tags; update any associated URLs on corresponding pages.
  • Add new graduate students and unpublish alumni.
  • Update any other people tags. Work with the web team to change tags or develop new ones as needed.
• Collect new graduate student and undergraduate student testimonials.
• Work with your department chair to determine which courses to feature and add “Featured Courses" on the course landing page.
• Review and update resource card information and links if they're incorrect or broken.

Summer Photography Updates

• Submit this form to request photos of:
  • New faculty or graduate students
  • New lab spaces or facilities
• Reach out to faculty members to gather candid photos of field work to use on the website throughout the year.

Who are your target audiences and what are the key characteristics of each? What do they like? How do they communicate? Use this information to illustrate to them why your department is where they need to be!

Work with your chair, DUS, and DGS to identify your department's selling points. What does your department do well? What research is your faculty conducting and why is that important? What are the unique opportunities your department offers undergraduates and graduate students? How do you stand apart from your competitors?

Identify what you're asking your website user to do. Do you want them to apply for your program? Perhaps it's to register for an event or apply to a faculty position within your department? Identify what you want them to do and then be sure to create a clear and concise path for them to do that. Remember, you can ask your different target audiences to take different actions. This is not a one-size-fits all, but varies depending on those strategic goals.

It's helpful to develop a strategic content calendar that aligns with important times throughout the academic year. Perhaps you want to feature certain content during the university’s yield time. Or maybe you want to pay tribute to your graduates near commencement to build alumni affinity to ensure they stay engaged with your department. Talk with your department leadership to align your content to drive strategic action in your website users.

Here's a quick guide:

August & September - Academic Year Begins

October - February - Largest Part of the Academic Year

March & April - Yield Season

April & May - Commencement

A: ArtSci Web & Communications uses Siteimprove to track and measure the usership of your website. Work with the web team to review the data if you need assistance navigating this robust analytics platform.

A: The nature of Arts & Sciences is interdisciplinary, so it makes sense that you may want to share content that originated from other departments. That's why it's a good idea to have those strategic conversations. Get together with your department chair to determine how you want to highlight interdisciplinary stories and how that may impact your target audiences. ArtSci Communications is happy to discuss strategic tactics like this with you, too.

A: Check your Siteimprove data, which will assist you in ensuring quality, accessibility, and SEO are running optimally.

A: Remember, your homepage is just the teaser. Not everything you want to feature has to live on the homepage. Rather, the content you share on the homepage should be strategic and lead the user into the website to complete the Call to Action. Think of your homepage like a handshake. Make a good first impression so the user wants to get to know your department more by clicking through to secondary pages.

A: Please tell your guest to submit a high-quality JPG or PNG file that is no smaller than 1 megabyte and 300 dpi. This size of photo will have enough data so we can resize it to make it larger or smaller, depending on the application. It’s also a reasonable size to send via email. With this type of photo, we’ll have it readily on hand in case we want to use it in any print materials, which requires at least a 300 dpi photo.

A: Yes! The best way to learn website management is by doing it. That's why each department has a staging site that can be used to practice before you create something on the live site. If you need assistance accessing your staging site, contact the ArtSci web team.