Web Team

Web Team

Mandatory and optional home page elements

This page outlines the mandatory and optional elements on UC websites. The style requirement for each element are also listed.

Mandatory elements on UC home pages

The only mandatory elements on home pages are:

  • Header and footer (includes links, banner, site name and bread crumbs). These are built into your site template and are non-editable.
  • Major navigation (usually 3 columns) For colleges, departments and programmes these are 'study', 'for' and 'about'. (These differ for service units depending on requirement. 'About' is usually common across all sites).
  • Contact details (right side of page).
  • News section of academic websites is centrally driven from the university's news system

Optional elements on UC home pages

These vary and can include the following:

  • Welcome message (above main navigation)
  • Events/Announcement/Seminars (or a variation of this). Right side of page
  • Student/staff profile (right)
  • Image(s) (right or below main navigation)
  • Quick links (below main navigation)
  • Additional links eg resources - may list department handbook for example (below main navigation)

Style requirement for each element

Elements
 Style requirements
Major navigation

Standard site link groups:

  • Study
  • For
  • About
  • Each group heading is achieved by using built-in heading 3 style.
  • When 'enter' is pressed underlining and bulleted list automatically appears from built-in style sheet.
  • No images are to be included in this area.
  • Do not change link groupings.
Right column
  • News
  • Features
  • Events
  • News - centrally driven for academic sites
  • Features/Events/Announcements/Seminars - built-in heading 3 style
  • Avoid overloading the area with too much text and too many items, keep to 2-3 items max and reduce the texts to 1-2 lines per item. Link to lower level page(s) with more information rather than cluttering up your home page.
  • Avoid 'click here'. Link the titles of the items instead.
  • Use bold paragraph for title of each item and use as link to more detail/full article.
  • Department contact information

Should have the following information:

  • phone (bold text)
  • email
  • address and
  • a link to the contacts page.
Optional elements for home pages
  • General Images
  • Can be one, two or three images either beneath news and contacts on right, or below main navigation.
  • For more details on general images see images on general pages within websites
  • Student/staff profile (Optional)
  • Centrally driven from central database
  • Quick Links
    (Optional)
  • Avoid having more than 8 quick links
  • Bulleted links