The Office of Marketing Communications has developed the following guidelines to support and maintain the integrity of Puget Sound’s institutional web presence. Please contact the Web Specialist for additional information.
- Website Guide (www.pugetsound.edu/websiteguide)
The Website Guide is a resource for campus content providers and includes training documentation, how-to guides, contacts, and style guide information. - Third-Party URLs
External URLs (for example, universitycommunications.com or pugetsoundmuseum.org) should not be created. The university’s web presence is identified as pugetsound.edu, and the development of multiple external URLs dilutes the university’s identity and makes it more difficult for users to remember and find. - Third Level URLs
Third level URLs (such as library.pugetsound.edu) requests should be reviewed by the Web Specialist and completed by Technology Services. - Hosting of External Sites
Short-term hosting of external sites, such as those developed for conferences hosted by Puget Sound, is permitted. Long-term hosting of web presence for outside organizations is strongly discouraged. - Faculty Sites
A faculty page is developed for every full-time faculty member (and selected adjunct faculty members) and is supported by academic department support staff. These pages will host basic information about faculty members, including a brief biography, contact information, educational information, and photo (optional, but highly recommended).Faculty may choose to add additional pages of content below their page, creating a faculty site. Pages and sites may be maintained by the faculty member, academic department support staff, or through requests to the MarCom web team. Full sites are optional; faculty are not required to maintain a site. Site content is up to the discretion of the faculty member but is still required to follow copyright and university web policies and guidelines. Faculty course information should appear on a course management site (e.g., Canvas).
Faculty may also choose to host a private website outside the CMS using a web editor such as Dreamweaver and a file transfer protocol such as FTP. Faculty sites hosted outside the Puget Sound content management system should not mimic or attempt to recreate the institutional web design. However, sites may use a similar color palette or type fonts. These private websites may not be supported by academic support staff or Educational Technology.
- Jurisdiction of Institutional Web Content
All content related to university functions that are not a faculty site or an external system should be maintained within the institutional site’s CMS. This includes sites for all academic departments and programs. Departments may elect to keep their own servers for departmental use, but primary promotional academic department sites should remain in the CMS.This policy is designed to maintain a cohesive look-and-feel and unify functionality across all areas of the institutional website and make it clear to users that they are viewing official content that can be trusted and shared. The cohesive site design reinforces that Puget Sound is a small liberal arts college and not a comprehensive university comprised of separate schools.
- Matching the University Website Design
Departments working with external vendor products should not attempt to match the university website structures designed without consulting the university Web Specialist to avoid issues that impact the overall site, copyright issues, and user experience. - Using University Identity Elements
Departments working with external vendor products should contact the university Art Director or Web Specialist to ensure the university's identity components are handled appropriately.