Authoring Official Web Pages

If your department already has a site you should have a department web administrator. This person has been authorised by your Head of College/School/Department to look after the site. You should speak to your department web administrator in the first instance as sometimes this person will publish the web pages on your behalf. If it is decided that you should have access, contact ICS Service Desk with details of which website you need to access. A list of department web administrators is available.

Those who are taking over a web site (on Sky) will need to complete an Authorisation form (PDF). If the web site is on the university's official web server (Sky), the ownership of the files in the department web directory will be transferred to the new person. Those with no experience of web page authoring may be interested in attending Courses for Web Authors.

If the web site is in the University CMS, contact ICS Service Desk for access to the web site and training on how to use the CMS.

Yes. The University's Web Code of Practice explains the rules which pages must follow. The web is not exempt from the law, and web pages should not contain or link to information which is likely to breach legislation such as the Data Protection Act 1998, the Sex Discrimination Act 1975, the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, the Computer Misuse Act 1990 and the Trademarks Act 1994. Web authors should be particularly careful not to bring the University into disrepute, and should remember that the material authored in their college/school/department area may be perceived as official information.

Although commercial advertising is not permissible in personal web space, department web sites can include both commercial and non-commercial advertising. Please read the document Advertising on University web servers for further clarification of what can be advertised, and the issues you may need to consider. Please note that (as with all official web material) your Head of College/School/Department must agree to the web space being used for the advertisement and, if you want to use the University web site for commercial advertising, you must discuss the advertisement with Research & Innovation Services.

Read the web design guidelines.

There are lots of resources! HTML Tutorial from W3Schools is recommended.  There is also staff development course which normally runs once per term. Details are available on the Organisational and Professional Development web site.

There is a separate page about tools for web authoring.

If your web site is on Sky and the necessary forms have been processed and you have been given access to publish you will be sent an email with all the information you need to begin. The pages can be created directly on the webserver in your department web space, or on your computer/network/floppy disk for transfer to the web server at a later date. Some department web administrators may ask you to create your pages and then he/she will transfer them onto the web server on your behalf. If you are transferring the files yourself, read the web page about accessing the webserver on Sky and transferring your files.

If your web site is in the CMS, you will be given training and access to edit your site through the CMS.  More information about the CMS, including video tutorials, can be found on our support pages.

If your site is on Sky, the home pages of your web site should be called index.htm, and the final internet address (or URL) for the department web site will be in the following format:

http://www.dundee.ac.uk/departmentdirectory/

This is the format that should be used on all publicity material that includes your URL. Note that the trailing slash which is vital to ensure the homepage is found. The URL always in lower case.

Yes. This will happen automatically once they have been linked from the University web site. Google will index your site the next time it crawls the University site.