Use of central systems and resources
Where central resources are available these should be used, rather than
duplicating the service on a departmental site. Resources currently
available include:
NESSIE
The News and Events Syndication System and Information Editor allows
departmental web authors to include automated news and event feeds in their
sites. These feeds will show information relevant to that department as a
priority, but when there are no, or few, current items, will display
University news and events.
Adding or editing items to the feed is done through a web-based system
(no need to use FrontPage or SharePoint Designer).
Web authors will need assistance from WaLT in order to set NESSIE up on
their sites, and should contact
walt@essex.ac.uk for further information.
Staff profiles content management system (SID)
This allows staff to manage their own profile page, as it appears on the
departmental site. As with NESSIE, editing of the content is carried out
through a web-based system, and so requires no special training for staff
using it.
Web authors will need assistance from WaLT in order to set up this system
on their sites, and should contact
walt@essex.ac.uk for further information.
Course finder
The course finder contains summary and
detailed profiles of all the University's degree courses. Departmental sites
should link to these course profiles, rather than duplicating the
information locally.
Module directory
Similar to the course finder, the module directory
contains profiles of all the University's taught modules. Rather than
duplicating the information locally, departmental sites should either: link
to these module profiles directly, or
pull the module directory
content into their own departmental template.
Online postgraduate admissions form
Rather than having its own version, departmental sites should link to the
central postgraduate admissions
form.
Online prospectuses
The undergraduate and postgraduate
prospectuses are available online.
The course finder also contains links to PDFs of the relevant
subject-specific section of the prospectus - to link to these PDFs from a
departmental site, simply copy the link from the course finder and paste it
into your page.
Things to bear in mind:
- The undergraduate prospectus is published in April each year, and
the postgraduate prospectus in October, so it is a good idea to indicate
that the information contained was correct at the time of publication.
- PDF files need Acrobat Reader in order to be viewed by users. The
Reader software is very widely used and most users will already have it
installed but it is a good idea to include a link to
Adobe's
Acrobat website for those who may need to download it.