Web Standards

Department Site Guidelines
All department (whether a service department or instructional) promotional pages must maintain the look and feel of the Harlingen site. Departments may select a personalized color scheme and graphics from the 50 plus color options and choose appropriate sidebar images.

All posted information including contact information should be pertinent, up-to-date, and grammatically correct. The content on any given page should be reviewed every 120 days for relevance and accuracy. All hyperlinks, especially off-site URLs, should resolve. Broken links are not acceptable. There should not be any instructional material on Instructional Department site. Instructional content belongs in the current LMS System (MyCourses).

The first page of each department’s site must include the following information in the template format which can be updated using the CMS Site Settings tool:

  • Department name and contact information (phone/fax)
  • Name and contact information of the director or department chair
  • Mailing address
  • Physical location on the campus
  • Office hours

Staff names and contact numbers are optional.

Departments’ major groupings of information will be listed in the left sidebar menu. They may be grouped with headings and bulleted links to content within their pages. Instructional promotional sites must also include information about the curriculum, faculty, program information, and any clubs associated with the program. The program’s site main focus should be potential students.

The information provided within instructional department pages should be organized using the following menus items:

  • Welcome Letter – From department chair or overall department summary (can be the index page).
  • Career Outlook – Describes jobs one can get in this field, roles and responsibilities, what employers want, and industry standards.
  • Job Placement – Explains the types of companies, with examples, that graduates generally are employed.
  • Facilities – Describes the location, building and lab specifics, bragging points that would make a student select this program and which illustrate industry standards
  • Faculty & Staff – Name, contact information and information about the experience of the faculty and staff or a general statement about faculty and staff.
  • Advisory Committee – Listing of the advisory committee members and a summary of how the committees operate.
  • AAS Degrees– Listing all AAS degrees available in each program (if applicable). If this links to the Curriculum Application, the link should be functional and point to the latest curriculum.
  • Certificates – Listing all Certificate degrees available in each program (if applicable). If this links to the Curriculum Application, the link should be functional and point to the latest curriculum.

Optional departmental sidebar links may include:

  • Industry Links – Actual hyperlinks to industry partners
  • Distance Learning – To describe and link to distance learning course information for this department.
  • Student Clubs – Official club charter description and link to student club Web site if other than the official college Web site.
  • News – Department specific news and information, and other categories as applicable.
  • Departmental Server – Link(s) to an independently run department site or server.

Web Standards Downloadable Web Standards Document [PDF]
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