With the goal of integrating all aspects of the Franklin & Marshall web site into a cohesive and easily navigated system, we have a set of recommended standards and guidelines for Academic Departmental sites. These guidelines were planned and suggested by the Provost's office and the Web Advisory Group (WAG) during the 2008-09 Web redesign project.
Header Images and Call-outs on home pages
The header images and callouts provide an avenue for each department to create its own unique brand and look, yet still provide the entire Franklin & Marshall site a uniform and consistent look and feel. The three horizontal header images appear just below the primary F&M header and navigation. A call-out is an item, link, or story you would like to highlight on the website. The placement of the call-outs is dependent upon departmental choice, and could appear as a right side bar, blue background, with up to three stories, or two across the bottom of the page's body content.
There are four templates available for departmental home pages. Each department can select the template that suits their needs the best.
Header images, callouts, and faculty profiles are dynamically generated using the Dynamic Content Manager (DCM). The value of dynamic content is that any changes that you make to your content is instantaneously reflected on your web site.
Navigation
The content of the side bar should include the following items:
- Field of Study information, which can be the content of the main page, or because some departments have multiple Fields of Study, the first links in the side bar should be that particular Field of Study name at F&M. This is a departmental choice as to which model to use. Additionally, this is the page which is linked to from Admission as well as the main body of the Academics landing page.
- Courses Offered, which replaces the separate College Catalog page
- Faculty & Professional Staff, which is generated dynamically through the DCM
- Contact Information which should, at least, include the postal address, location, telephone, FAX, and the name and a email link to the Academic Department Coordinator as well as the Department Chair.
If a department wants to have additional information on courses that is not covered in the Courses Offered section, there should be a side bar link just under Courses Offered entitled Additional Course Information. This is where a number of departments have housed the Major and Minor information and simply titled it Additional Course Information.
Departments can add optional side bar links such as Research, Events and Seminars, Photo Albums, etc. between the Faculty & Professional Staff and Contact Information links.
If a department has a number of links which are directed toward current students, then those links should be grouped under one side bar link entitled For Current Students, with a landing page. The content under that landing page in the side bar then becomes a sub-menu of For Current Students. This allows the easiest and quickest navigation for this audience group.
If there are more than 7 options in a menu or the side bar, navigation becomes difficult for Web visitors. If there are more than 10, it becomes practically impossible for users to differentiate between the options.
We recommend keeping the number of links to 10 or less. Keep your web visitor's experience in mind and group pages and links into helpful categories (e.g., For Current Students).
Getting Help
If you have any questions or would like training on the Digital Content Manager (DCM), please attend one of our Web Clinics which are held weekly in our effort to provide direct one-on-one training for the College community. More information on our Clinics and other Web resources for your website can be found on the ITS Web Support page.
Tutorials and quickstarts on the DCM will be available very soon, and posted on the ITS Web Support page.
For consultation and assistance in helping you better understand your needs, suggestions as to training sessions, and with help mapping out a plan for your web page or site, please feel free to contact Teresa Hagan, Assistant Director of Web Services, Information Technology Services.
