UW-Waukesha WWW Policy

Policy Statement

The University of Wisconsin-Waukesha recognizes the value and potential of publishing on the Internet, and so allows and encourages students*, staff and faculty to publish electronic information. Student organizations, administrative or academic departments may create electronic home pages, personal pages, publications pages or other pages that carry out official University business in support of the University's mission. Contents of all electronic pages must be consistent with UW-Waukesha policies and local, state and federal laws. This includes links to other pages or computers. In other words, a page may be considered in violation if it contains links to a page that violates the policy.

All administrative or academic department home pages and pages that are the electronic equivalent of a publication will begin with the UW-Waukesha logo. These pages will also contain the date of the last revision and will clearly communicate the name of the administrative or academic department publishing the page. Copyright laws apply to electronic publishing as well as to print publishing. Publishers must have permission to publish the information, graphics or photographs on their pages if the publisher is not the author or creator. Electronic publications are subject to the same University policies and standards as print publications.

UW-Waukesha resources may not be used to create web pages primarily for personal business or personal gain, except as permitted by other University policies. The University does allow for personal pages that provide information about an individual that is relevant to that individual's role at the University.

The official UW-Waukesha home page will provide links directly to personal pages via department pages. Administrative or academic departments may, if they choose, link to faculty, staff, student or student organization personal pages. When requested, administrative or academic departments must deactivate links to material that violates this policy. The authors of personal pages must follow the guidelines in this policy.

The following statement will appear on all personal pages and all student organization pages:

"The views and opinions expressed in this page are strictly those of the page author. The contents of this page have not been reviewed or approved by UW-Waukesha."

Note: Student personal pages are currently not available because of system constraints.

Reason for Policy

The quality of information published by the University plays an important role in maintaining the strong reputation and image of the University. This policy sets minimal standards that are meant to ensure that information published electronically is visually appealing and well written and follows the same high standards as other forms of published information.

The University complies with applicable local, state and federal laws.

Who Should Know This Policy?

Dean
Associate Dean
Administrative Directors / Department Representatives
Campus WWW Policy Committee
Steering Committee
Computer Related Technology Committee
Groups Officially Registered as Student Organizations

Definitions

Campus WWW Policy Committee: Deal with ongoing WWW issues. Review changes to policy, procedures or the structure of the campus home pages. Will review and maintain the requests from all administrative or academic departments regarding Official Department home pages and links associated with those home pages. Will review and maintain the requests from all student organizations, administrative or academic departments regarding personal home pages and links associated with those personal pages. Take questions regarding the policy and forward complaints of policy violations to the appropriate University offices.

Computer Center: Provide links from the campus home page to departments, staff, students and approved organizations. Monitor information to ensure it is current. Replace links to outdated information. Promote the use of the World Wide Web by departments and recognized organizations. Provide training on web servers, clients and authoring tools. Remove links from department pages to pages that the WWW Policy Committee determines contains material that violates local, state or federal laws, or other UW-Waukesha policies.

Dean, Department Representative or Director, Student Activities Coordinator: Responsible for the content (including links to other information) of student organizations, administrative or academic department's published electronic pages and the dean must sign off on content before links from the UW-Waukesha home page or the campus home pages will be set up. Will reassign responsibility for the student organizations, administrative or academic department's web pages, if the page maintainer leaves the University or is relieved of this responsibility.

Faculty, Staff, and Students: When publishing information, observe copyright regulations, all local, state, and federal laws and UW-Waukesha policies. Observe publications and other standards that befit the image of the University.

Link: A one-way hypermedia connection from one site to another on the World Wide Web. Expressed as a "link to" or "link from" a web page of information.

Maintainer / Publisher / Information Provider: Person responsible for publishing and updating the information contained in World Wide Web pages.

Personal Page: A web page for an individual faculty member, staff member, student or student organization.

Public Relations: Advise campus student organizations, administrative or academic departments about policy, style and content. Evaluate and revise this policy to keep it up to date. Evaluate and revise campus publishing procedures to keep them up to date. Maintain the UW-Waukesha home pages.

Publication Page: The electronic equivalent of a printed publication.

URL: Uniform Resource Locator. For Example: http://www.uwc.edu

Procedures

Forms / Instructions

In support of this policy, the following forms are included:

UW-Waukesha WWW Publishing Guidelines
Department WWW Department Link Request Form
WWW Personal or Student Organization Home Page Request Form

WWW Publishing Guidelines

Design, style, and other considerations

Required for Department Pages

Department and personal page publishers are responsible for their own web pages. This includes avoiding copyright violations, complying with local, state and federal laws and other University policies, and keeping the information up to date.

Because web visitors can enter a page directly, without going through a department home page or the UW-Waukesha home page, it is important to let them know where they are. Include the logo on administrative or academic department home pages and electronic publications; on all other web pages, make sure the user can tell where the page comes from (that is department name and UW-Waukesha campus name) by including that information on the page or by linking back to a campus home page.

Include the following on each department home page:

logo
name of the administrative or academic department publishing the page
page or publication title, if appropriate
name and/or e-mail address of maintainer who is responsible for the page
date of the last update
copyright statement (if needed)

Required for Personal and Student Organization Home Pages

The following elements must be present on all faculty, staff and student personal home pages:

name and e-mail address of the page owner
name of the Student organization
date of the last update
disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this page are strictly those of the page author. The contents of this page have not been reviewed or approved by UW-Waukesha.

Include the date the material was updated at the bottom of anything you publish.

Personal home pages may not contain the University or campus logos or other symbols of the University or campus.

Copyright laws apply to electronic publishing as well as to print publishing. Be sure you have permission to publish the information, graphics or photographs on your pages if you are not the author or creator. Photographs of an individual or personal information about an individual must not be included without the permission of the individual.

Don't overload with graphics that will slow the page down and frustrate the users. Consider having a text-only shadow page or icons for pictures. The more complex you make your graphics, the longer it will take for pages to load. You may want to connect at a slow speed and test to see how long it takes.

Graphics with primary colors may work better than graphics with subtle colors.

When you include graphics, make sure you have alternatives or ALTS (words that replace the graphics) for people who do not download graphics. Test it that way by turning off the graphics.

Because pages load from the top down, don't design your pages with large graphics files or all your graphics at the top. Consider the time it takes for viewers to see them.

Browse the web to see what works and what doesn't.

Consider how to organize your information, where you want it to be linked and how to point people to it. Computer Center staff can be a good resource.

Most web users don't want static information; they want to communicate and navigate through it.

Personal home pages should be constructed so that they are not wasteful of University resources for frivolous purposes.

Developers are strongly encouraged to use styles and colors that are easy to read and accessible to as wide an audience as possible. Complicated background patterns and dark background colors can be difficult to read. Some combinations of text and background colors can be completely unreadable by people with color blindness.

Students should notify the Computer Center at the end of the year (May) if they wish to keep their page active.

UW-Waukesha Logo

The UW-Waukesha logo is the primary means of communicating the University name.

Logo Guidelines

The logo must stand alone, not blend in with other text or graphics. Don't run the logo into a title or sentence or combine it with another graphic element.
Whenever possible, the logo should be in the top third of your top-level web page.
Do not alter the logo or change the aspect ratio in any way.