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8 Web Manager Checkpoints

 

By Nathan Skaggs

Creating and maintaining your web pages can be overwhelming, and sometimes the web doesn’t get the attention it deserves. This is understandable when you have a million other tasks that seem more pressing than a web page.

However, visitors to your page don’t see it that way. It’s their first impression of your department and, in a greater sense, our university. So, you’ll want to make sure everything is in tip-top shape before your page is published.

Here are eight simple things you should look for on your pages before they go live.

1. Current Content

Keeping your content fresh and up to date should be your top priority. For academic departments, this means including any new degrees, specializations, or minors on the web. It’s important that all of the information for each program of study is accurate, too.

After all, this is most likely the first place a prospective student will go to find out more about your program. Don’t miss your chance by leaving out information or having outdated content.

It’s important that you schedule regular web maintenance to review, update, and improve your pages.

2. Header Sequencing

It’s tempting to choose a heading style to make key phrases stand out from the rest of the content on your page. But, headings should be used specifically for labeling sections of content on your page. If you want information to stand out, use bold or italicized text. We also have some icons that you can use that may help bring more attention to important notes on your page.

As you’ve heard before, headings are important for scannability. Make sure your headers flow in a progressive order, from H1 to H2 to H3 and so on.

3. Voice & Tone

Your content should always be conversational and user-focused. If we’re just focusing on ourselves or our department in our content, we’re doing it all wrong. Instead, let the reader know how they will benefit from what we’re offering.

Follow our voice & tone guidelines to ensure your content is warm and inviting.

4. Spelling & Grammar

Let’s face it—we all make mistakes. With human error in mind, it’s important to use the tools available to ensure that those errors don’t make it out into the public for all to see. When an institute of higher education such as Liberty has glaring spelling or grammar errors, it’s just embarrassing. You can avoid embarrassment by using spell check and reading through your text ahead of time.

5. Paste as Plain Text

Having trouble with different size fonts or strange spacing on your page? It could be because you’ve copied the content from a Word document or another source and have pasted it directly into the page.

Copying and pasting content without using the “Paste as Plain Text” option can add extra HTML code to the page. While you won’t see the code, you’ll definitely experience the negative consequences of extra code once the page is live.

6. Navigation Sets

These are important for the user experience because they help them find other pages in your department that are relevant to them. You don’t want your users lost or without information simply because they couldn’t find it. Navigation menus will help them find what they’re looking for—and quickly!

Only WordPress Administrators can edit/create navigation menus. Academic and Non-Academic departments should contact the Web Content Team to edit their menus.

7. Links

Links are great to have on your page to lead users to more information. But they’re not so great when they don’t work or aren’t labeled clearly.

Before your page goes live, be sure to check all the links to make sure they’re working properly and linked to the correct location. This includes links to:

  • External web pages
  • Other Liberty pages
  • Documents/PDFs
  • Email

 

A site search of Liberty.edu returned 1,780 results for links labeled “click here.” Where do you think a link labeled “click here” will take you? It’s hard to tell because the link text is not descriptive. Instead, you should use words that clearly describe where a link is going. Read more about why you shouldn’t use “click here.”

8. Image Sizes

Always, always, always size your images in Photoshop before uploading them to your media library. Sizing images in WordPress can cause slow load times for your page, and may even impact the quality of your image. That’s because web browsers try to load the image at its original size.

Be sure to check your image sizes after uploading them to your page to make sure they’re the right size!

Check It Off

Checking these eight things before your page gets approved will save you editing time in the future and increase your chances of a faster page approval.

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