WEB: University Website Standards for Design & Content
The permanent short link to this Answers page is https://www.fredonia.edu/web-standards
This document supplements the policy at https://fweb.fredonia.edu/policy/public/final/TEC-PL-112.pdf with specific details for website standards and best practices.
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:
What are Fredonia's data classifications?
The university's https://fredonia-edu.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/AN/pages/1103790724 provides detailed descriptions of each data classification:
The https://fredonia-edu.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/AN/pages/1103790724 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 https://fredonia-edu.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/AN/pages/1103790724 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. If an image does contain fewer than 150 characters of text, then all of the text must be added into the alt text for that image.
All photos should be obtained from the Marketing Photo Library with help available at Photos. 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
Design Style Guide describes the overall branding and look for all official web pages. Please use the provided web page templates as they are intended.
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.