WEB: University Website Standards for Content & Design

Who to Contact

Please email webteam@fredonia.edu with ANY questions related to the website.

Website Content

The Web Team will make necessary changes to website content and formatting as needed to maintain an accessible, consistently designed, accurate website.

All web pages, images or files that are located on public university websites at https://www.fredonia.edu, https://my.fredonia.edu, https://blueview.fredonia.edu, and https://events.fredonia.edu must be maintained and updated to reflect current and accurate content and be accessible to all audiences.

What is a public website?

• Fredonia's public websites include, but are not limited to: 

  • www.fredonia.edu

  • my.fredonia.edu

  • events.fredonia.edu

  • fredoniabluedevils.com

What are Fredonia's data classifications?

• The university's Data Risk Classification Policy provides detailed descriptions of each data classification:

  • Category 1 - Public

  • Category 2 - Private

  • Category 3 - Restricted

• The Data Risk Classification Policy  applies to all members of the university community, as well as to 3rd parties who handle university data.  

What kind of information may be published on a Fredonia public website?

• The Drupal web publishing service may ONLY be used to publish Data Risk Classification Policy Category 1 Public Information, in any form such as text, PDFs, video, images, etc.

• Following https://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/ guidelines about an institution releasing any student information, it is essential to obtain written consent from a student before publishing information about them on a public website. See FERPA: “Generally, schools must have written permission from the parent or eligible student in order to release any information from a student's education record.”

• No information or data that is classified as Category 2 - Private or Category 3 - Restricted may be published on any Fredonia public website at any time.

Text

All writing should be accurate, succinct, and current. Images must not contain text, unless the text is short enough that it can appear in the alt text field.

Do not add colors to text that are not included in the Styles menu in Drupal. This is important to avoid low-contrast problems with accessibility.

Photos & Images

Images must not contain text, unless the text is short enough that it can also fit into the alt text field for the image. If an image does contain fewer than 150 characters of text, then all of the text must be added into the alt text field for the image. All images must have a text description in the alt text field.

Reason: Text included in an image cannot be read by search engines or by the screen readers used by visually-impaired visitors. Failing to provide readable text for all visitors is a violation of state and federal web accessibility requirements.

All photos should be obtained from the Marketing Photo Library whenever possible. Departments may also add their own photos for their events, etc., so long as the photos are clear and good quality. Poor quality images may be removed from the website by the Web Team.

Photo help is at http://www.fredonia.edu/photos/help. The photo request is at: https://www.fredonia.edu/photo-request.

Images should be published as .jpg or .png file format and uploaded into the corresponding folder on the website.

All images must have an alt text description of the image. Captions should also be included whenever possible.

The Web Team will monitor websites photos for professional image quality and effective cropping and make image updates as needed.

Videos

The Fredonia Video Team uses both YouTube and Vimeo video publishing services to manage and publish videos for public distribution.

After a final video is published by the Video Team on YouTube or Vimeo, it may be embedded or shared using Drupal on public web pages using these steps.

The Web Team will monitor website for videos for professional quality and make updates as needed.

Files

All documents that can not be a web page should be published as accessible PDF file format, whenever possible.

Files that are no longer active or current must be removed from the university websites periodically, upon the request of the university Web Team, or risk removal as deemed appropriate by the web team.

University websites should not be utilized for storage or archiving purposes.

The Web Team will periodically remind the campus community to purge its websites directories of all inappropriate or out-of-date files.

Website Design

No code injections of JS or CSS

If your department website requires injection of JavaScript or CSS code, do not add any such code to the source of the page. Instead, please contact the Web Team, webteam@fredonia.edu. For overall consistency across the website, please use the provided web page templates as they are intended, instead of creating new styles or design elements.

Styles

Web Style Guide demonstrates the brand, element styles, and overall look for the Basic Page template. Please use the provided web page templates as they are intended.

Drupal Web Publishers can edit the Basic Pages in their departments.

Do not add colors to text that are not included in the Styles menu in Drupal. This is important to avoid low-contrast problems with accessibility.

Templates (Content types)

All Drupal websites must follow the existing page templates as described here: https://www.fredonia.edu/drupal/help
Please use the provided web page templates as they are intended.

Left side column with Site Navigation & Who to Contact

All Basic Pages in Drupal must have a Left Site Navigation and a Who to Contact (Office Block). Please use the provided web page templates as they are intended.