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CALS Web Hosting & Management Standard

The CALS Web Service Website Hosting and Management Standard establishes guidelines for creating and managing websites associated with CALS faculty, staff, departments, and administration.

    Responsible Officer: Associate Dean of External Relations & Advancement
    Standard Primary Contact: Mark Millard, Web Services Manager
    Effective Date: September 6, 2024
    Next Review Date: August 1, 2025

    Rational and Purpose

    The College of Agricultural and Life Sciences (CALS) uses the web hosting platform to promote the college to prospective students and faculty, share information about areas of study and research, and provide information and tools to the broader state communities in-line with the  Wisconsin Idea. In addition, the CALS website ecosystem is a place for current students, faculty,  and staff to discover new information and access CALS procedures, forms, and tools. This standard establishes college-wide expectations on creating and managing websites associated with college faculty, staff, departments, and administration. These responsibilities are essential for ensuring CALS sites meet campus branding, accessibility and cybersecurity requirements.

    Scope

    This standard applies to CALS faculty and staff who request and manage websites on the CALS WordPress Web hosting platform.

    Standard

    1. All new website College URL domains must be formally requested, reviewed, and approved.
      1. The Associate Dean of External Relations is accountable for documenting and managing a review and approval process that is timely and transparent.
      2. The Web Services Manager is responsible for reviewing and coordinating the request necessary key stakeholder regarding the review and approval process.
      3. The CALS Web Services Team is responsible for responding to questions and processing approved requests.
      4. All websites must identify a website owner and one or more content managers.
        1. The website owner is typically an Associate Dean, Department Chair, Center Director, or project sponsor. The owner is accountable for the quality of the content by providing direction, support, and staff time to the content managers.
        2. The content manager is responsible for regular and timely curation of content on the website. This includes reviewing and editing the content on a regular basis, ensuring that web page content meets accessibility requirements, and respond to reported configuration and cybersecurity events from the Web Services Team.
      5. CALS-managed websites must be associated with the wisc.edu domain and sub-domains unless approved by the request process.  
      6. All websites must be hosted by CALS or Campus infrastructure (e.g., WiscWeb) and maintained by professional IT staff unless approved by External Relations and CALS IT.
    2. For approved and existing websites, the CALS Web Services Team is responsible for: 
      1. Supporting the web hosting platforms.
      2. Configuring and providing tools for web content managers.
      3. Designing, developing, and maintaining CALS web themes and page templates.
      4. Consulting on website configuration and design.
      5. Providing tools and instructions to website owner and web content managers so they can setup their own metrics to identify website visitors, page views, broken links, and other basic usage information.
      6. Assisting content managers in how to use the web platform tools.
      7. Curating the code repository for CALS themes, templates and plugins.
      8. Maintaining an inventory of websites we support. Conduct a yearly review of the inventory to validate site owners and content managers and determine if the content is being actively curated.
      9. Maintaining tools and environments for staging websites and testing functionality.
      10. Configuring and testing the web platform to address cybersecurity vulnerabilities and maintain digital accessibility standards of the theme and CALS custom plugins.
      11. Create and maintain documentation and a catalog of training options for site owners and web content  managers.
    3. Web content managers are to:
      1. Use use UW branded website themes provided by the CALS Web Services Team or the UW-Madison Office of Strategic Communication.
      2. Follow the branding and style guidelines provided by CALS External Relations, and UW-Madison Office of Strategic Communication.
      3. Content managers are responsible for establishing the knowledge and skills to use the tools to manage websites.
      4. Invest time each month reviewing, validating, and updating website content.
      5. Reviews and updates should include:
        1. Review and update directory information.
        2. Review and update content.
        3. Identify and fix broken links.
        4. Review and evaluate web accessibility of content, linked documents, and pages.
        5. Remove content that is no longer current, outdated, or has a date that exceeds three calendar years unless the content provides historical context or value.
        6. Validate that copyrighted materials are appropriately used.
        7.  Review for user experience.
        8. Contact the CALS Web Services Team with any questions or consultation requests.
      6. Work with CALS Web Services Team to respond to reported configuration and cybersecurity events in coordination with CALS and Campus Cybersecurity.
      7. Review that the site is updated with revised branding and style guides. vii. Review for web accessibility (e.g., image alt tags, link text, video captioning, etc.).
    4. Office of External Relations is responsible for: 
      1. Coordinating, providing, and addressing questions regarding branding and style guides.
      2. Provide feedback to website owners regarding deviations in messaging.
      3. Curate and provide a photo library.
      4. Coordinate with CALS Administration stakeholders on where content should be hosted within the CALS domain, the UW-Extension domain, or by other parties.
    5. Other setups, configurations, and operational standards:
      1. Web sites for e-commerce must use UW-Madison-approved tools identified by the UW-Madison Business Services (https://businessservices.wisc.edu/accepting-payments/deposits-revenue-receivables/payment-card-merchant-services-and-pci-compliance/).  
      2. Integration of new website tools used for online event registration must be reviewed by CALS Web Services in coordination with key stakeholders.
      3. Integration of third-party tools must be reviewed or coordinated by CALS Web Services Team in coordination with other key stakeholders. 
      4. If not hosted with CALS Web Hosting or WiscWeb, website platforms must be patched to current, supported software versions.   Critical security vulnerabilities will be applied within 48 hours or have a plan in place.
      5. Websites and web forms should not collect sensitive or restricted data (https://policy.wisc.edu/library/UW-504) without consultation or prior to a cybersecurity risk assessment being completed. Email the CALS Web Services Team to request assistance.

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