Web Publications

Purpose

The UW-Whitewater web site is an important resource for distributing information about the university to faculty, staff, current and prospective students, and the general public.

It is the University's intent to enable faculty, staff, and students to publish web content freely and openly within the constraints of local, state, and federal laws, including copyright laws. It is important to remember that the web site reflects the image of the university overall.

• Appropriate Use
• Official Pages
• Privacy Issues
• Procedures for Official Pages
• Application Development for the UW-Whitewater Web Site
• Procedures for Managing Departmental Web Servers

Appropriate Use

All web sites and pages hosted on the university domain should conform to all university rules and policies; local, state and federal laws; and copyright and trademark laws.

Official Pages

Official web sites represent and promote the university itself, its organizational units such as colleges and departments (academic or administrative) and organizations that are officially registered by the university, including student organizations.

Privacy Issues

UW-Whitewater analyzes logs from the campus web site to better understand the use of our site and to improve its usability. In this analysis, we make no attempt to gather information from web logs with the individuals who use the web site.

UW-Whitewater does not sell or redistribute any personal information collected at our campus web site.

Privacy concerns regarding student records are protected by FERPA regulations: UW-Whitewater Privacy Policy Statement

The University strives to ensure the privacy rights of individuals; one example is the UW-Whitewater Library's policy on user privacy: Library Privacy Policy

Procedures for Official Pages

Official pages should present information in a professional manner that describes the university clearly and consistently. At a minimum, official pages should:

• Be accurate
• Be up-to-date
• Use correct spelling, punctuation, and grammar
• Meet web accessibility guidelines to make pages accessible to all users
• Follow the guidelines in the UW-Whitewater web publishing style guide
• Follow the guidelines for appropriate use of UW-Whitewater logos and graphics

Colleges, departments, administrative units, and organizations are responsible for maintaining the content for pages on the campus site; ICIT establishes web accounts for the purpose of maintaining each content area.

Web content is ultimately the responsibility of the Dean of each college, department chair, or director of the office or program that the web page represents. Outdated or erroneous content will be communicated to these parties, who are responsible for taking action to correct the information.

Academic course pages should follow the guidelines for official pages, but the content is the responsibility of the individual faculty or instructor.

Application Development for the UW-Whitewater Website

ICIT maintains the infrastructure and application environment for the university web site, including a number of interactive, web-based applications. Those campus departments, programs or organizations with web application development needs should consult with the ICIT web support team during the planning stages of any web project.

Procedures for Managing Departmental Web Servers

ICIT provides the infrastructure for web applications that meet most university needs. University departments, units and registered organizations (including student organizations) should consult with ICIT to determine whether it is advantageous to run and manage their own web application server to address unique needs. Those who manage their own web server have the following responsibilities:

• Contact ICIT to register the server and get information on OS licensing requirements.
• Provide the computer hardware, software and support staff.
• Follow ICIT-published guidelines for server security & web security guidelines.
• Adhere to the policy statements in this document for official university web pages regarding all content that is published on the server.

Students are not allowed to run web servers (or other types of information servers) with their personal computers on the UW-Whitewater network.