Checklist for web editors
See the things you should do regularly if you’re editing part of the Sussex website and where to get advice.
Your work
As an editor of our website, you should develop a regular pattern for checking that the content you’re responsible for is up-to-date and accurate.
Daily
Check Broadcast for article approvals and offer any thoughts for adding new articles for your school or department.
Check with your head of school or school administrator if there is any news. If there is, use your judgement to double-check with the communications team if the news is of wider interest.
Weekly
Set aside one day a week to have a general check over of your part of the website.
Ensure content is still accurate (such as office locations and phone numbers or, to a deeper extent, references to our own policies or changes in the law). If you’re not sure about a change, or you think it may affect other parts of the website, contact us.
Use the link checker facility in our web content management system (WCM) to make sure links send you to the right page.
Monthly
Check documents in the document manager and using the audit report facility in the WCM.
Delete documents which are no longer being used or are out of date. If you delete links to a document, also delete the document from the WCM as search engines will still find the document.
Keep up with highlights in your department. Is a member staff launching a new book or doing a professorial lecture? Are there any student activities?
People lists
People lists on web pages can get out of date when staff start, leave or move role.
In a school or department, the school administrator is responsible for listing and associating staff to a school or department website.
The school administrator may need to contact HR if someone is not appearing in the database, is appearing and should not be appearing or their title is wrong.
If a web profile does not reflect a recent update made in Sussex Direct, contact us.
For admin staff (including student advisers) to be attached to a departmental website and appear in the A-Z listing they must be put in the school associate group with the correct department. They have to be manually added to this group because admin staff are appointed to schools, not departments.
If a research group website has a people list driven by the central database, get access to update the list from ITS.
Research students should see the Doctoral school advice on web profiles.
HR lists and associates current staff to administration websites. If a person is not listed, listed wrongly or needs to be taken off the list email human.resources@sussex.ac.uk.
Key dates
Be aware of important publication cycles for Sussex.
Our prospectuses go live in March (for undergraduates) and August (postgraduates). Check links to the prospectus are working and that course and module lists are accurate.
At the start of the new academic year in September check internal sites are up to date with relevant information for staff and students.
Getting advice
There are many sources of help if you’re stuck.
If you want to:
- make better web pages, read our best-practice guidance
- communicate more clearly, see our guide for writing well
- be consistent in numbering and naming, look at the Sussex house style
- solve a system query, refer to the WCM manual or Broadcast manual
- understand the Sussex identity, find out about our brand and read our tone of voice guidelines.
If you need to get in touch with the digital team, contact us.