The Digital Strategy and Communications team in University Communications provides a branded Drupal platform to meet web publishing and external messaging needs as the primary website for schools, colleges, and select administrative departments. This standardized, branded, functional Drupal-based template is designed to serve organization-wide strategic communications priorities in departments, schools, and colleges.
University Communications leads communities of users, with areas of focus ranging from content creation and analytics, to web design and brand implementation on digital properties.
Smaller-scale websites, often for specific units, labs, or efforts, or those not related to the institution’s strategic communications priorities, are directed to a branded WordPress platform centrally supported by Information Services or other alternatives.
Partner Responsibilities
Site organization — information architecture — as well as the posting, publishing, updating, and maintaining of all content are the responsibility of individual schools, colleges, and administrative departments.
Digital Communications Leads
Partner units will appoint a communications lead and a backup to serve as the liaison between their unit and users and the Digital Strategy and Communications team. This communications lead, a communications director when possible, serves as the site owner and the unit’s single point of contact with the Digital Strategy and Communications team and handles all technical and communications requests from members of their unit. University Communications will provide leads with initial training and orientation, but individual leads are responsible for providing all training to additional users in their organization. The Drupal platform built and maintained by University Communications provides partners a flexible web publishing platform without requiring a web developer or programming/web development expertise. Web leads should possess modern communications skills, such as the abilities to write for the web, use content management systems, apply basic HTML, and access and analyze web analytics. Language for use in position descriptions and position descriptions themselves are available upon request.
User Management and Terms
University Communications suggests that only the lead and backup communicators have editing access to sites to ensure consistency in messaging and language. When users are added to sites, the communications lead in each unit handles training and manages any questions or technical issues they raise. If the communications leads cannot answer a question or need further assistance, they should submit a help ticket.
Access requests for new site editors are submitted and managed only by the communications lead/liaison. That person is responsible for informing Digital Strategy and Communications when users should no longer have access. The communications lead/liaison ensures that all users in their organization agree to adhere to all University of Oregon policies including the following:
- Policies regarding collection of data protected by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), which is prohibited on websites managed by University Communications. Student records are protected by FERPA and are not permitted to be collected on any site managed by University Communications, except for data designated as directory information. The Student Records Privacy Policy covers how FERPA can apply to students and parents as well as faculty and staff.
- The Acceptable Use of Computing Resources Policy.
- The Information Asset Classification & Management policy, which classifies all university data and defines the roles and responsibilities of data trustees, data stewards, data custodians, and data consumers.
- Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 (Level AA), as well as web accessibility requirements in the UO Style Guide.
- All standards outlined in the UO Style Guide.
Drupal best practices outlined on the University Communications website.
Digital Strategy and Communications Responsibilities
Digital Strategy and Communications handles maintenance of the platform, which includes installation of Drupal, theme, modules, and libraries, as well as security, and feature updates. On behalf of partners, the team serves as the primary point of contact with Information Services regarding web hosting. Websites managed by Digital Strategy and Communications have a scheduled maintenance window on the third Wednesday of every month, 8pm through midnight.
Digital Strategy and Communications will train web leads to use the platform, answer questions, and provide support through a ticketing system. This training includes how to process site access requests and remove account access when notified. The partner liaison serves as the single point of contact with the Digital Strategy and Communications team.
Out of Scope
University Communications does not provide content, custom designs, graphics, or programming. Web applications and business tools (ecommerce, intranet) — transactional websites, sites supporting office workflows sites or file-sharing, sites requiring authentication, or sites supporting academic efforts or hosting confidential information — are not supported by University Communications. University Communications does not provide web hosting. The Digital Strategy and Communications web development team supports only sites created on their standard platform and does not support in any way sites built outside the team, including those built by developers in other departments or third-party contractors.
Alternative Campus Resources
In addition to the communications-focused platform mentioned above, there is also a no cost flexible central WordPress platform perfect for department, class, lab, institute, and program sites. This central WordPress platform is supported by Information Services.
Also available at no cost are SharePoint teams sites. SharePoint teams sites are available as part of the University’s Microsoft site license. These sites are perfect for internally focused sites, maintaining document stores, and other intranet-style sites.
Additional Site Requests
University Communications provides the Drupal platform for primary organizational websites and all schools and colleges. New sites must relate directly to and support the institution's strategic communications priorities. To request a new Drupal site on the University Communications platform, please complete a brief site application outlining objectives, ownership, and strategic importance of the effort. Smaller-scale projects, frequently for specific units, labs or efforts, or those not related to the institution’s strategic communications priorities, are encouraged to use an alternative such as the central WordPress platform.
Google Analytics
University Communications will provide guidance and access to web analytics and will facilitate their use on sites managed by the Digital Strategy and Communications team. However, communicators within individual units are responsible for tracking and reporting web analytics to measure success of communications efforts. The Digital Strategy and Communications team will add Google Analytics tracking codes to sites it manages using Google Tag Manager. Responsibilities of the unit include generating reports, interpreting data, informing Digital Strategy and Communications of any issues regarding data collection, managing campaigns, 3rd party access, and historical data backups. It is the unit’s responsibility to maintain continuity of access to their site’s Google Analytics and Tag Manager accounts. Before adding any existing Tag Manager or Analytics accounts to a site, the Digital Strategy and Communications team will need Tag Manager and/or Analytics admin roles.
Abandoned Site Policy
Websites are only as good and effective as the information contained on them. Every website represents an investment in time and resources just to host the site and keep it secure. Any site that has gone 6 months without content updates will be marked as abandoned. Digital Strategy and Communications reserves the right to disable and take down any abandoned site. Before the site is disabled, Digital Strategy and Communications will reach out to the liaison and can provide a static copy of the site.
Cost
Digital Strategy and Communications does not currently use a fee-for-service model. However, Information Services provides web hosting for the University Communications Drupal platform. Should Information Services implement a fee-for-service model for web hosting, all costs will be the partners/site owners’ responsibility.