To get access to Modern Campus CMS and receive training, the site’s web liaison should fill out the Modern Campus CMS Access Request Form.
For additional help, please email webmaster@mtu.edu.
There are three button colors that can be used in the CMS. They can easily be created when you set up your link or you can use the Buttons in a Row snippet to create multiple buttons in a row.
Alt tags (also known as Image Descriptions or alt text) are very important for the accessibility of your webpage. Moz does a good job of explaining what alt tags are. Please take a moment to read up on what alt tags are and why they are important. Moz also provides some tips for how to write good ones.
There are many uses for alt tags. The most well-known ones are:
- Screen readers will speak the alt tag of an image for users who cannot see.
- If an image cannot be loaded due to some sort of network or IT error, the alt tag will display instead.
- Alt tags boost search engine rankings and can help your website’s images display in Google search results.
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.
Digital Services in University Marketing and Communications hosted a Digital Marketers Meeting every other month from 2016 until early 2025. The discussion focused on digital content production, best practices, and a setting to stay informed and plug into recruitment and reputation initiatives spearheaded by University Relations and Enrollment.
Many academic departments will link to a listing of departmental courses in Banner. The URL looks like:
https://www.banweb.mtu.edu/pls/owa/studev.stu_ctg_utils.p_display_class_facbio?ps_department=EE&PS_STYLE_DEPT=ece&ps_level=UG&ps_faculty=all
The URL includes several parameters that can be customized for each department.
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:
A dashboard for Google Analytics 4 (GA4) data and a Search Engine Optimization dashboard are now available for Modern Campus CMS websites, Michigan Tech Blogs, and Michigan Tech Events Calendar in Looker Studio. In the GA4 dashboard, you will find charts with analytics for:
- Page traffic and users
- Acquisition
- User demographics
- Device information
- 404 hits
- Vanity URLs
- Files and outbound links
- Anchor, call, and email links
- Buttons, cards, and touts
- Accordions
- Pop-ups, forms, and gift box shares
- Header media and image galleries
- Lightboxes (pop-up images)
- Tabs
- Videos
- Search terms
The SEO dashboard provides details on traffic coming from Google Search and how that traffic converts to prospective student leads.
When using URLs on webpages, documents, or other files, it is important to pay attention to the first part of the URL—HTTP or HTTPS. This could apply to hyperlinks, iFrame code, embedded images and videos, etc.
The “s” in HTTPS means that the connection is secure. URLs that use HTTP are not secure and malicious parties could steal the data being sent. They may intercept usernames, passwords, or other information filled out in a form; credit card information; or other personal data. For details on how HTTP and HTTPS work, there’s an easy-to-understand article that explains it using a carrier pigeon example.