Web, CMS, and Professional Development Resources

With a decentralized model for web maintenance at Michigan Tech, each department is responsible for creating and maintaining its own website within the University’s requirements. University Marketing and Communications provides a content management system (CMS) for many departments on campus along with several resources for using the CMS, web best practices and strategies, writing guidelines and standards, and brand management. There are also external sources available for further professional development.

Michigan Tech Resources

Webmaster’s blog

• Modern Campus CMS
• Best Practices
• General Web

Email List and Digital Marketers Meeting

• Join the email list
• Digital Marketers Meeting repository

UMC Website Services

• Web Style Guide
• Image Guidelines
• Page Layout Recommendations
• Writing for the Web
• SEO
• Website Design

UMC Resources

• Brand Guide
• Editorial Guide

Other Resources

• CMS Site Contacts
• Self Organic Audit Checklist
• Accessible Technology training resources

If you have reviewed all the help resources and are still stuck, email webmaster@mtu.edu. Please provide as much information as possible, including a link to the page in question or a screenshot of the issues and what browser you are using.

External Professional Development

The Digital Services team uses several resources to keep our skills sharp and learn new concepts, trends, and implementations. If you have a good resource that is not on this list, please share it with us. We are always looking to expand our network!

We use 5% time to encourage continual professional development within the team. The last two hours of each Friday (5% of the work week) is dedicated to professional development. Additionally, we are firm believers in traveling to web conferences and networking with other universities to learn and share new ideas.

General Trends

• American Marketing Association
• Carnegie
• Pew Research Center: Internet & Technology
• WebDev on Reddit

Podcasts

• Marketing School – Digital Marketing and Online Marketing Tips
• Perpetual Traffic
• Social Media Marketing Talk Show
• The Digital Marketing Podcast
• The Recipe For SEO Success Show
• Today in Digital Marketing

Analytics and SEO

• John Mueller
• Jon Boeckenstedt
• Microsoft Bing Blogs
• Moz Blog
• Search Engine Journal
• Search Engine Land
• SEO Chat
• The Keyword (Google Blog)

Web Design / UX / UI and Accessibility

• Nielsen Norman Group
• WebAIM
• Deque University

Higher Education

• EAB
• EDUCAUSE
• E-Expectations Research Reports (RNL)
• Higher Education Web Professionals Association
• Inside HigherEd
• NACAC
• SimpsonScarborough
• The Chronicle of Higher Education

Conferences and Training

• axe-con
• Content Marketing World
• HighEdWeb Conference
• Pubcon
• SMX
• WebAIM Web Accessibility Training
• WPCampus Conference