Drupal unh.edu websites

The unh.edu website promotes the UNH brand and provides information on all of the university's offerings. Eligible members of the university community can request a unh.edu website.

Purpose and Audience

The purpose of the unh.edu website is to provide UNH colleges, schools, departments, offices, services and other organizations with UNH-branded, UNH-affiliated websites on a university server. UNH Web and Mobile Development (WMD) offers site design, development, guidelines, training and ongoing support to set up and maintain unh.edu websites. These sites can contain:

Related Information

  • Landing pages
  • News / Blog
  • Calendar / Events
  • People/Faculty listing functionality
  • Images/videos
  • Slideshows/Spotlights
  • Web forms
  • Social media

The audience for these sites is the UNH community and the general public.

Website Software

WMD is responsible for the development, maintenance and operation of these unh.edu websites. The software application used to build these sites is Drupal.

Requesting a Website

When you request a website, WMD works with you through the whole process, from consultation, budgeting and planning to development and delivery and beyond, to ongoing support and maintenance. After consultation, if it’s determined that an outside vendor should create the site or application, WMD will help you with that process.

To set up a unh.edu website, the following criteria must be met:

  • UNH staff or faculty must request/sponsor a site for a department or organization with demonstrated need.
  • Either no site currently exists where the material can be posted or a parent site exists under which the new site can be posted.
  • No existing site/application exists that covers the same material or offers the same functionality.

Set-up and Training Requirements

The following is a checklist of requirements for a unh.edu site:

  • Approved domain name
  • Designated website administrator roles (One individual may fulfill multiple roles):
    • Site owner: Each site must have one site owner. Sites are owned by deans, department chairs, division heads or directors who may or may not be users of the Drupal content management system (CMS). Site owners are ultimately responsible for the content of a site. Site owners should designate a backup site owner, as well as a new site owner if they leave their position.
    • Web manager: Web managers support their school, college, department or division by offering training and support in the use of the CMS.
    • Content editor: Content editors create, edit and manage content within the CMS. Content editors may be staff, faculty members or students and must be approved by the site owner or the web manager. They are responsible for ensuring the quality, accuracy and timeliness of content on their site(s), as well the alignment of content with the university brand. A backup content editor should be designated for all sites.
    • Webform editor: A webform editor creates, edits and manages webforms and their submissions, following the university policies regarding data collection, usage and retention.
    • Website access or changes to access may be requested by logging in and making a request through the Accounts Management System.
  • Training

Content Requirements

  • Branding, logos, fonts and colors
  • Site navigation
    • Website menus should be used only for navigation within the site except in certain specific circumstances. Please see the standard on site navigation for more information.
  • Imagery and video
    • University-approved high-quality photograph and video resources are available for use on your website
    • All media should be in the correct format and size
    • Do not add text to an image file, add it in Drupal instead. When placing text over an image, the contrast needs to be high enough to allow the text to be easily read. Select photos that have clear areas for text, typically darker since text is usually white. This helps make the text legible and ADA-compliant.
    • All images must have alt text, a simple text description of the image, in order to be ADA-compliant. Alt-text also provides additional information to search engines, improving the SEO of the page.
    • All imagery and video used on websites should comply with all copyright and permissions restrictions.
    • Image galleries - Images convey visual impact and excitement for website visitors. Too many images can diminish the user experience, slowing down the load time of a webpage.
      • Include only selective, high-quality, impactful images that help the mission of the page
      • Use a maximum of 1 page with maximum 12 images
      • Avoid repetitious or low-quality images
      • Use social media to share events  or other images of interest to your specific audience
      • Add newsworthy stories and images to UNH Today
      • Store additional photos in Box, using "Share folder with people with the link" 
  • Webforms
    • Webform editors must follow university policies for collecting, using and retaining personal information.
  • .pdfs
    • .pdfs should only be included in a website if they are appropriate for the general public or legally required to be visible on the website.
    • If the material is important, create a webpage instead.
    • If the .pdf is a form or document for current students, faculty or staff only, store it in Box and create a task for it in myUNH instead.
  • Editorial - Content editors should familiarize themselves with the guidelines for writing for the web.
  • Accuracy - Content should not be duplicated on your own site or from other sites  Websites should always link to or ingest from the “single source of truth." For more detailed information, see the standard about approved single sources of truth and embedded content.
  • Review schedules – Website administrators are responsible for keeping their pages updated and accurate and should establish review schedules:
    • Static content, or content that rarely is changed, should be reviewed annually. This includes high-quality images that may be placed in prominent positions on a site.
    • Time-sensitive content, or content that requires frequent updates, should be reviewed according to the related expiration date, no less than once a semester. Event listings or announcements, for example, should be updated immediately as events expire.
    • Webforms should be reviewed at least twice a year to make sure the form is working correctly, the correct person is receiving the form information, and that the data is being stored or removed as needed.
    • Out-of-date content should be deleted or archived. This includes events that have passed, news that is no longer relevant, or information that is outdated. Materials such as news stories, press releases and newsletters should only date back five years.
    • All content should be reviewed periodically for broken links, spelling errors, and ADA compliance.
    • Pages that have not been visited in the past 18 months should be removed.

  • Additional approved tools - These approved tools can be incorporated into your Drupal site:

Testing, Security and Compliance Requirements

Support

For support for your unh.edu Drupal website, please contact WMD.

Training

There are many options for Drupal training for both new and experienced site managers and editors:

  • New users can take the Introduction to Drupal class through Academic Technology.
  • Anyone working on a Drupal website is welcome and encouraged to attend the open walk-in training, help sessions and workshops that AT offers. For a schedule of the training sessions and walk-in times, see the AT training calendar.
  • Once you are a site manager or editor, you’ll have access to the Drupal training website for training, templates, tutorials, templates, images and meet-up information.
  • Drupal community of users workshops
  • In addition, as part of the Drupal user community, you’ll receive helpful tips and updates through Drupal community emails, the @unhweb Twitter channel and the IT Signals newsletter.

Responsibility for Content

Unh.edu Drupal websites are created by members of the university community acting as official representatives of the University of New Hampshire. Site owners are responsible for complying with all relevant laws, university policies, and this standard.

Manager and editor accounts remain active for 1 year. If an account hasn’t logged in in a year, it may be disabled. To reactivate the account, fill out a support request form and update your Drupal training.

If no edits have been made to a Drupal unh.edu website in 18 months, email notifications may be sent to the site owner. After notification, the owner will have 30 days to log into the site, or the site will be unpublished. Owners can request that the site be republished. If it is not republished, the site will be deleted after 1 year. Four notification emails will be sent out at 30 days, 2 weeks, 1 week, and 1 day prior to the site being unpublished.

Archiving

Unh.edu Drupal sites are not archived.

Violations

Although UNH AT does not monitor or regularly review standalone site content, it reserves the right to remove at any time any content that it considers to violate this standard or any other UNH policies. If inappropriate or inaccurate content is discovered, UNH WMD will contact the site owner to discuss the issue. If the site or content owner cannot be contacted or is no longer at UNH, that content will be administered by WMD and can be removed if deemed inaccurate or inappropriate. When content is obviously unacceptable, UNH WMD will immediately remove the content prior to contacting the site owner. Unacceptable entries also may cause site access to be suspended.

Reports regarding inappropriate content may be sent to WMD.