Web Liaisons
Introduction:
The Web Liaison program was created to assist Web Services with the management of the content on the SUU web site. Right now, the SUU web site encompasses over 50,000 individual pages and is continually growing. This does not include the Library web site and all of its resources or the athletics site. With a staff of only two, you can see that Web Services can't adequately monitor that content to ensure that the information is both accurate and current, which is the main challenge that we face.
To help us meet this challenge, we require every department to have a Web Liaison. The role of the Web Liaison is to ensure the correctness and timeliness of the information that a particular department is providing through the web, and provides a single point of contact with which Web Services can coordinate efforts. All web modifications, including updates to faculty sites, should be done through this person.
In order for this system to work, every member of the department needs to understand how the information should flow. Every department member needs to know their liaison, every liaison needs to know how to contact Web Services, and Web Services needs to maintain a list of every liaison. If the liaison leaves SUU, a new one needs to be appointed as quickly as possible. The Department Chair is responsible for appointing and informing Web Services the name of their Web Liaison.
Responsibilities:
- The main responsibility of the liaison is to ensure that a department's web site contains accurate and current information. They do this by regularly scanning all departmental content and making any corrections if needed. At a minimum, all pages within a department's site should be checked at the beginning of each semester to help ensure the integrity of the content.
- The liaison acts as the main contact between Web Services and their department, and all web modifications should go through the liaison. If Web Services has a question about that department’s web site, Web Services will contact the liaison. If someone in the department has a question about the department’s web site, they should contact their liaison and the liaison will contact Web Services. This is to prevent multiple people requesting Web Services to repeatedly change the same information.
Special Notes for Academic Department Liaisons
- Academic department liaisons should encourage department faculty members to forward their syllabi to Web Services at the beginning of every semester for posting on faculty web pages. In accordance to the style guide, the following items are allowed to be posted on faculty web pages:
- Course Information: Syllabi, office hours, course handouts, etc.
- Professional Information: Degrees obtained, Work experience, research, publications, presentations, etc.
- Other Information: Information that does not fall in the other categories. (hobbies, interests, etc.)
- Some faculty members maintain their own pages. If this is the case, the liaison does not have to collect their information.
- Academic department liaisons are also responsibility for ensuring that pages within SUU's Academics site are accurately reflecting their department's offerings. Specific pages to check:
Processing Updates:
There are two options for how the liaison can complete their duties:
- Method I: The liaison can email changes/updates to webservices@suu.edu for Web Services to process. All changes should be sent in an electronic format (ex. An attachment to an email) to allow for quickest processing.
Specific instructions on how to format update requests - Method II: The Web Liaison can receive access to update the department’s web information themselves. The liaison must receive training to ensure that the liaison is familiar with the web style guide (to help ensure site consistency) and basic authoring issues (such as file size, image optimization, accessibility for those with disabilities, as well as other issues). The department must purchase Macromedia Contribute to use this option.
See the training document from Method II training