Best Practices for Maintaining Your New UBCMS Website

Step 1: New Site Checklist

  • Notify all departmental site users (faculty, staff, current students) of the new site and new URL
  • Notify affiliated departments/faculty, campus services, admissions, etc., of the new site and new URL
  • Notify known external site users, such as donors and affiliated community organizations, of the new site and new URL
  • Update the URL on existing digital communications sources, such as email footers, social media accounts or PDFs that are housed online
  • Update the URL on all future print communications, such as letters, fact sheets, brochures, etc.
  • Inform departmental faculty about the new URLs for their individual profile pages, so that they may update their email signatures, business cards, CVs, personal websites, etc.

Though URLs from the previous site will redirect to the homepage of the new site for at least one year, the redirect will eventually expire per University Communications policy.

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Step 2. Familiarize Yourself with Your New Website

When maintaining your website, it’s important to have a good working knowledge of the content on each page. This includes a general idea of the purpose of each page, where it falls in the hierarchy of the site and recognizing whether or not the content needs to change often or will stay more or less the same.

Step 3. Create a Stewardship Plan

Knowing who is responsible for each page or specific content pieces is beneficial. 

  • Select your web team – usually 1-2 people within the department.
  • Keep a schedule of regular site updates. 
  • The Digital Assets Management folder (DAM) can get messy quickly. Upload new versions and delete old versions.
  • Decide on a process for handling revision requests from outside the web team.

Step 4. Optimize the Site Experience

The most important function of your website is to provide accurate, current information to users. Following your stewardship plan should ensure that the content is correct, at which point you can begin to optimize your site:

  • Create Visual Impact. High quality photos of students and professors actively engaged in an interesting task help to highlight the experience and culture of the department. Consider building an internal database of images for future photography needs.
  • Highlight Points of Pride. Think about the department’s noteworthy features, such as award-winning faculty or students, cutting-edge equipment, experiential learning opportunities; community involvement, etc. 

Step 5: Ensure ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) Compliancy

The university adheres to the Web Content Accessibilty Guidelines (WCAG 2.0) in order to provide an inclusive web experience for all of our users. This includes content, video captioning, alternative text, electronic document accessibility and more. Through training and regular remediation, our team will help ensure that these guidelines are followed. Along with the Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI), our team uses several tools for on-going checks of the accesibility of our websites, helping us to remediate any issues that may arise. 

UBCMS Accessibility
Web Accessibility at UB
Electronic Document Accessibility at UB
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0)

Step 6: Request Assistance When Needed

We encourage you to attempt content updates, but if you require assistance with your new website, such as complex updates, site permissions requests, additional training or ensuring the site is ADA compliant, please submit a Website Maintenance and Updates work order.