The current content policy for www.citadel.edu was promulgated by The Citadel's Office of Multimedia Services, and is reproduced at the bottom of this page for your convenience.

A new policy is under construction and will be passed around to all faculty and staff for comments. All comments will be carefully considered, resulting in some policy revisions. The final college-wide policy will be posted after the review process is complete.

Cross-reference the policy for Cadet Points-of-Contact.

Space for notes before the policy-writing gets underway:

• Miscellaneous technical issues. No page-filename or folder-filename should contain the space character (" ") or the underline character ("_") as this can cause some obscure problems. We will grandfather in existing pages with these characters, i.e. there is no need to go back and revise the names of your pages/folders/links. Just try to avoid these characters in the future. A preferred separator character is the hyphen ("-").
• Scope. This policy covers a large variety of web sites, including academic departments, administrative offices, special programs, and any other web sites that are linked within two clicks from the President's Page. This policy does not cover personal faculty pages, personal cadet pages, or cadet company pages.
• Personal faculty pages. Under construction.
• Personal cadet pages. Under construction.
• Cadet company pages. Under construction.
• Academic department pages. Under construction. To be described here: A list of features that each academic department web site must have, e.g. information about each major, about each minor, a list of faculty, a list of staff, etc.
• Import into Web Content Management System (CMS). The preferred method to implement the features listed in this policy is conversion and import of existing legacy web pages into The Citadel's new CMS. All conversions/imports should be complete by February 1, 2006 or 2007.
• Features offered by The Citadel's new CMS:
• Under construction.
• Browser support message. All web pages must specify what browsers they are supported in, or provide a link to a page that contains those specifications. For an example, see this link.
• Frameset pages. Pages embedded into framesets are poorly indexed by search engines (or not at all). In addition, visitors who navigate directly into a page embedded into a frameset will typically not see the other frames, usually making further navigation impossible. For this reason, frames are unacceptable. The new CMS provides for the easy generation of a navigation system on each page, thus providing the positive benefits of a frameset system without its negatives. 
• Navigation trail. All web pages must contain a navigation trail of links (e.g. Home > Public Affairs > Web Site > Web Content Policies) that track the visitor back to the Citadel home page (http://citadel.edu/).
• Link back to www.citadel.edu. All pages must contain a link back to the Citadel home page (http://citadel.edu/). This is automatically taken care of by the above requirement for a "Navigation trail."
• Page titles. The title "Untitled" or "The Citadel" or "Citadel Home Page" is unacceptable. Each page must have a unique title based on its navigation trail, e.g. "The Citadel / Public Affairs / Web Site / Web Content Policies".
• Dynamic and static content. The criteria described here are requirements not only for static pages but also for dynamic content served from application servers.
• Possible strategy for dynamic site conversion. One possible strategy for grandfathering in legacy dynamic applications is to use a frame-based system (for an example, refer to this page). As of 2/5/04, the underlying dynamic application contained by this frameset (this link) only requires a navigation trail and a browser support message to become compliant to the new content policy. An acceptable example navigation trail served from http://cold.citadel.edu/ would be Special Orders > 01. August 2003 SOs 1-16 > Special Order 1. Note that visitors can get a non-framed version by clicking on the Printer Friendly link. Although in general frames and framesets are unacceptable, this is one acceptable use of frames/framesets.
• Logos. The only acceptable logos are those described on this page. The Citadel Board of Visitors has approved this new logo for use on web pages in place of all older logos. The Citadel seal in particular should only be used in association with formal events; most web usage of the Citadel seal is inappropriate.
• Advertising. Advertising of outside, private companies is prohibited.
• Political views. Expression of political viewpoints is prohibited. Both political content or links to political content are forbidden.
• Event calendars. All campus events will use a common, web-based event calendar program, made available through the netCCMS framework. During a transitional period, the old WebEvents calendars may still be used, but the eventual goal is to unify all events into the netCCMS framework.
• Blinking / animation. Minimize blinking and animation. Reserve this for video content, slideshows, or other things that add true value to the site. Surveys say almost all web site visitors view needless blinking/animation as a sign of unprofessionalism.
• Document management. Posting of non-HTML, non-Flash documents (Microsoft Word, Adobe PDF, Microsoft Excel, etc) is acceptable, but each such document should be registered in the centralized document management system. The current exception is faculty pages, which can continue as they have. Furthermore, if a PDF document is posted, it's original source document must be posted as well (e.g. Microsoft Word, PageMaker, etc); this is to ensure that the original source document remains available if corrections are needed years down the road.
• Contact information and responsibility for web content. All web pages will have a standardized "Contact maintainer of this web page" link. All pages will be maintained by a specific person, who will be assigned by the head of that specific organizational unit (department, school, office, etc). If no person is assigned, the system will by default assign the head of that organizational unit, i.e. they will receive the contact email. Each organizational unit will be responsible for its own web content.
• Conversion timeline. The timeline for the necessary dynamic and static web page conversions described here is two to three years from February 1, 2004; therefore, all conversions must be complete by sometime between 2/1/06 and 2/1/07.
• General design recommendations:
• Minimize scrolling. Try hard not to make your visitors scroll. If there are frequently-used links on your pages, place them near the top if possible. Although photography is a great plus, try not to place large photos above frequently-clicked links. There are of course many exceptions to this rule.
• Minimize graphic text. Graphic text should be used sparingly! If you must use graphic text (i.e. for compelling aesthetic reasons), please be sure to provide an "alt" tag so that people with non-graphical browsers can read your text.
• Test your site's accessibility. Accessibility testing programs are available, and should be used to test how accessible your web site is. See how your site renders in various screen resolutions (800x600, 1024x768, and above), various browsers (IE, NS, Safari, etc), and various operating systems (Windows, Mac, Linux, etc).
• Test your site's printability. How does your site print in "non-printer-friendly" mode? How does your site print in "printer-friendly" mode?
• [Paraphrase selected items from RWG document pp. 90-91 here]

Copy of current content policy for www.citadel.edu

[ Copied from http://www.citadel.edu/computing/mm/web/policy.html, last updated 3/17/03 ]

ITS will grant server space on The Citadel's Web server to any Citadel department or official student organization, including Alumni classes and regional Citadel clubs. We do not grant Web space for "personal" Web pages.

ITS does not have the resources to create or maintain Web pages for individuals, departments, or organizations. However, we do offer training classes on Web development and the Macromedia Dreamweaver software. Multimedia Services also has several books on HTML, Web design, and Macromedia Dreamweaver that are available for checkout in Bond 255, and numerous online resources are available.

• To be given access to the server, a Citweb account form must be filled out.
• Pages that have broken links or empty pages marked "Under Construction" will not be posted.
• Web pages must be checked and maintained by the department or organization.
• Web pages are governed by the rules regarding intellectual property and offensive or annoying material in The Citadel's Computer Use Policy.
• Personal Web pages will not be posted.
• Web pages created for a class project will be posted on the Web server only if the content of the pages is judged to be of lasting value to The Citadel. ITS will not post pages created for class projects until after the class has ended.
• The main file for your Web pages (the homepage) must be named index.html or index.htm.
• HTML forms that mail information to a designated person are allowed as long as they use our mailing script. For information about how to use this script, please contact webmaster@citadel.edu.
• Web counters are not supported.
• Statistic reports are not available.
• Outside advertising is not allowed.