The CLAS Office of Academic Technologies (OAT) manages most of the web sites for the College following standards defined for university web sites as specified in: University Policy 302, Web Communications
Most older websites that consist of collections of HTML files (known as “static HTML sites”) will be migrated to a web publishing platform such as Drupal or WordPress. For more information on this initiative, see: CLAS Administration > Technology Initiatives
Requesting a Site
Department, program and center sites are managed by University Web Communications. Contact the CLAS Director of Web Application Development to request these types of sites. Faculty or staff may request a CLAS Pages site online, see: CLAS Pages > Request a Site.
Owners of CLAS Pages sites can assign other UNC Charlotte users roles on their sites such as author, editor or administrator. CLAS Pages site owners are responsible for reviewing who has access to their site and updating this access to ensure only the appropriate users have roles and that their roles are appropriate to their responsibility.
Setting up New Sites
The CLAS Director of Web Application Development oversees the creation of new CLAS Pages sites. Most new sites for departments, programs and centers will be set up to use Drupal. Most other sites including those for faculty profiles, research, projects, and blogs will use CLAS Pages.
Updating Sites
All department, program and center sites should have at least one designated “site manager” who can make updates to the site. Some sites may have more than one site manager. This can help to ensure that sites can be updated when the primary manager is out of the office or otherwise unable to add, edit or delete content as needed.
All requests for updates should go to the site managers. Before faculty, staff or student assistants are given access to their sites, the University Web Communications team will provide them training. Site managers are ultimately responsible for ensuring that the content posted is appropriate and accurate, if others such as student assistants are helping.
Site Technical Support
Site administrators, editors and managers should contact the Helpdesk for support requests, see: UNC Charlotte Helpdesk Online
Department, program and center sites are supported by the University Web Communications team. CLAS Pages sites such as those for faculty profiles, blogs, projects and initiatives are supported by CLAS OAT.
CLAS Pages documentation including video tutorials are available online, see:
CLAS Pages > Help
Contact the CLAS Director of Web Application Development for technical support including help with formatting, layout and uploading files such as text documents or images.
Site Content Support
Site managers should contact the CLAS Director of Communications for help with their sites’ content including help with writing, formatting and organization. The Communications office may be reached at clas-info@uncc.edu or 704-687-0082.
Site Access Reviews
Every 6 months, the CLAS Director of Web Application Development will review user access rights on all CLAS sites that are not faculty or staff profile or research sites in consultation with the department head or their designee. Every 1-2 months, the director will also change administrative level access passwords for all platforms/applications that have user accounts that do NOT use NinerNET authentication.
The CLAS Director of Web Application Development will also review every month all user accounts and if inactive accounts are discovered, will inform users and determine if their access is still needed. If not, these editors will be removed.
Site Content Reviews
Every 6 months, the CLAS Director of Web Application Development in collaboration with the CLAS Communications Director will oversee the review of contents on all CLAS sites to ensure that they are accurate and up-to-date so we can communicate professionally and accurately with our students, faculty, staff, alumni, prospective students, friends and others interested in our college. Part of this review will include ensuring compliance with University web guidelines.
Guidelines
Policy #302 requires that most “university-wide” web pages use Drupal, the new content management system (CMS) and that no department, program or center site use any CMS or site publishing protocol other than Drupal on their main “public-facing” site. Each department and office should strive to maintain up-to-date contact information, including faculty titles. This helps us communicate well and accurately internally and externally.
Based on these University policies, the CLAS guidelines for sites are as follows:
- All departments or offices should list on their sites their faculty and optionally staff. Many department or office sites may also provide a single profile page for each faculty or staff person.
- Any faculty or staff can request to use CLAS Pages for sites related to professional profiles, blogs, research, projects or conferences.
- Static HTML sites will NOT be supported by CLAS OAT.
- Faculty and staff can set up static HTML sites using ITS servers. See: Service Catalog > Websites > Personal Sites