Website Creation and Content Management
- Service available to: Faculty, Staff, Researchers
- Themes: Collaboration, Communication
- Service Category: Communication and Collaboration
- Service Areas: Content and Collaboration, Communication and Conferencing
- Fees May Apply:
Description of Service
This service promotes USask by enabling colleges, schools, and administrative units to deliver externally-focussed content and services through the public web in support of institutional business, academic, and research needs such as recruiting, telling the university’s stories, and building community relations, and establishing and promoting partnerships.
It provides the tools to create, update, publish, and manage university-branded websites using the university’s web content management system (WCMS). Standard web elements (e.g. news publishing, and faculty, staff and researcher profiles) are included.
The website creation and content management service provides a consistent USask brand and user experience when people visit the university’s websites.
Access
The website and content management service is available based on business needs of the institution and relationship to the university. The following types are already in existence or generally approved:
- College and School websites
- Senior Leadership website (e.g. leadership.usask.ca/vice-president-portfolio)
- Key institutional functional areas (e.g. students.usask.ca, teaching.usask.ca, careers.usask.ca)
- Research group websites (e.g. research-groups.usask.ca/<groupname>)
- Researcher websites (e.g. researchers.usask.ca/<firstname-lastname>)
- Conference websites (e.g. conferences.usask.ca/<conferencenameYYYY>)
Requests for a website are not guaranteed. Top-level domains (e.g. mysite.usask.ca) are generally restricted to colleges, schools, and university level research centres. If you're not sure what option might be available to you, please follow the steps in the article How do I request a website? (login required). For technical assistance regarding content management email web@usask.ca.
USask faculty members and research groups are eligible to utilize the website creation and content management service to create their own website that is USask-branded and hosted by the University. They are created under researcher.usask.ca and research-groups.usask.ca respectively.
Availability of Support
Core Hours: 8:30 am–4:30 pm Monday to Friday
After Hours: N/A
Service Standards
- Site setups are done on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
- Launches of new sites are done on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
- Service levels and support commitments are outlined in the ICT Core Services Service Level Agreement.
Service Exclusions, Limitations, and Restrictions
- Website requests, including top-level domains, for websites hosted on university servers must be approved by ICT and requests are not guaranteed.
- Redirects and/or vanity URLs are not guaranteed. If approved they are limited to 6 months. Extensions may be granted on a 6 month basis to a maximum of 2 years.
- Content development, entry, and ongoing maintenance is the responsibility of the website owner (e.g. college/unit/department).
- Website owners are responsible for designating web editors (at least one person and one backup person) within their unit who can perform updates as needed. Web editors will be expected to complete Cascade training before being given access to edit websites.
- Websites must use the standard USask-branded web templates; no custom development is done.
- Coding support/troubleshooting for websites is not provided.
- Content must follow the university’s Visual Expression Guide, Verbal Expression Guide, and Editorial Style Guide. Visit the Marketing and Communications section in PAWS (login required).
- Any websites or applications that do not comply with university policies may be taken down without notice.
- All websites must follow IT security protocols.
- For security reasons there is no allowance for usask.ca domains to be hosted externally unless it is explicitly approved by Information and Communications Technology.
- When creating forms to collecting information and data, the university’s Data Management Policy and the Data Governance Framework must be followed.
- If needing to collect fees or other financial information online, submit a General IT Request (login required) before doing so as there are compliance and security protocols that must be followed.
- Conference websites will be archived one year after the completion of the conference.
- Web template feature enhancements and/or integrations are developed based on the benefit to the institution as a whole. They are evaluated primarily on the principle of improving user-experience across the usask domain; including accessibility and resource availability.
- Web template features and/or integrations may be limited, restricted, discontinued, or modified.
- All websites hosted by the university are subject to change and/or decommission.
Service Charges
- There are generally no charges for the website development and content management core service for colleges, schools, and central administrative units.
- Research centres, groups, and units associated with resource/responsibility centres may incur a fee.
- Support for legacy systems and websites that are not part of the core service will have some charges associated with them.
Additional Resources