Author: Megan Ross

Building a New Website

Modern Campus CMS is available for certain Michigan Tech websites including Tech Forward initiatives, academic departments, administrative departments, official research centers and institutes, and research initiatives/groups/units. All sites within Modern Campus CMS are required to designate at least one web liaison to manage the daily maintenance of the site. At least one backup editor is recommended.

New websites are built in a test environment, within an ou- directory. This will allow the site to be published throughout the build process so stakeholders can preview and approve the site before going live. Sites within the ou- directory can only be accessed with the direct link and are not searchable.

Accordion Snippet

This snippet creates Slider- or FAQ-styled accordions. Clicking on one of the accordions would open or close that section. Each row in the snippet will create one accordion. Creating three or more accordions within one snippet would automatically add an Expand All/Collapse All link at the top right. If you have more than seven accordions together, it is recommended that you try to split them into multiple categories.

Screen shot of a slider with the first one open.

Screen shot of an FAQ with the last question open.

Web Liaison Role

Each Modern Campus CMS website is required to have at least one designated web liaison to manage the daily maintenance of the site. The liaison is the main contact for the website for suggested edits, corrections, accessibility, etc. They also manage access requests. When a liaison is not designated, the dean, department head, or chair may be contacted in their place and is able to request access and perform other roles of the liaison.

Organic Audits

University Marketing and Communications (UMC) conducts courtesy organic optimization audits for websites within Modern Campus CMS. Our goal is to guide departments in polishing their web content with an end result of attracting prospective students to the university or meeting other strategic goals.

The audit conducted by UMC reviews key best practices for the various parts of our websites to identify areas for improvement. We have an internal checklist for our staff to use when auditing a site that we review with you after the audit is completed. A link to a shorter, self-audit organic checklist is also available for you to use.

Designated web liaisons can use the Organic Audit Request Form to request an audit. Audits are done in the order that requests are received, as project workload allows, and could take place a couple months after the request is placed. A project manager will contact you once we are ready to begin your audit to learn more about your goals and set up a kick-off meeting. Once started, the audit should be completed and recommendations provided within two weeks. It would be up to you, the liaison, to implement those recommendations.

Relevanssi WordPress Plugin

Relevanssi is a WordPress plugin that replaces the standard WordPress search with one that includes a lot of features and configurable options. Michigan Tech has installed the free version of Relevanssi, not the premium version.

Some of the features available include:

  • sorting search results by relevance instead of date
  • matching partial words
  • setting the search or OR or AND
  • highlighting search terms