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.
The Image Editor Gadget in the CMS will crop, compress, and optimize the images you create for your webpages. There is also code on our pages that serves up the most appropriate size of the image crops for the device being used. All images used in the CMS should be created with the Image Editor Gadget to ensure this code and the snippet code work, provide standard image sizes across our sites, and improve page speed and performance.
Michigan Tech has been using a tool called Siteimprove to find various issues on Modern Campus CMS webpages. The system has the ability to send scheduled reports to people on a regular basis. UMC created a custom CMS Content Editors Dashboard listing several quality, accessibility, search engine optimization (SEO), and editorial issues in one place. While Siteimprove has many more reports available, the selected issues have been identified as within the control of departmental CMS editors. This Dashboard replaces the previously available separate Broken Links and Misspellings reports.
Dashboard Reports
The CMS Content Editors Dashboard includes the following reports, subject to change at any time:
Locations from the campus map can be embedded onto a webpage, similar to Google Maps, using static maps. You can also link to a specific location from your webpage. Using the campus map, rather than a generic Google Map can provide the user with more photos and details about the location, while still including useful features such as driving directions.
Depending on the content on any given page, the pages within the CMS can take a while to load. In order to speed up the load time, UMC has been implementing processes that may change the quality or accuracy of the view on the Edit tab only. For an accurate preview of the page, use the Preview tab. This preview will not be affected by the noted changes.
The following content may not display exactly as it would on the live page when viewing from the Edit tab:
You may need to rearrange content on your website to meet strategic goals or due to a department reorganization. Decisions should be based on analytics, research, or other data-based factors. There are some key steps to this process to ensure it goes smoothly and that all changes are reflected in the final redirects to avoid frustration for users searching or using bookmarks.
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.
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.
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.
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.