Spring and Fall Cleaning

As each semester begins, consider setting aside time to clean up your site. Make a plan for ongoing minor maintenance over the course of the semester. Remember that if something is on your site, it is visible to the public and available in search engines such as Google. If you have incorrect information on your site, people will see it. So make maintenance a habit. Updating your website can seem like a daunting task requiring a large time commitment but checking and updating a few key things can make a big difference in a small amount of time. If you do not have time to make all of the changes you want to, just do the most important items and make a plan for getting the rest as time goes on. Consider scheduling a day of beauty with the CHSSWeb team to discuss more comprehensive updates, if needed.

Check & Plan

1. Check your faculty and staff listings for accuracy and for missing images and bios. CHSSWeb's import process does not remove people from your site, so faculty and staff who leave will remain on your site until you remove them. New hires are added a few days after their first paycheck, usually about two weeks into the semester. Detailed information about how new people are added to your website can be found here.
2. Review your site titles and your program titles. The new semester often brings new roles for faculty and staff. Site editors can manage the site and program level titles on their website. Faculty ranks are imported from Banner. If you have questions about a faculty rank, contact CHSSWeb.
3. If you are using pages to list your faculty rather than relying on CHSSWeb's "/people" URLs, you will need to update those pages as well.
4. Review any content on your website that you know may change each semester, such as advising information.
5. Do your faculty know they can update their course section descriptions and add syllabi when they update their bios? Consider sending them a reminder. We have specific instructions for updating bios that you can reference.
6. Add upcoming events.
7. Think about how you want to use your site's articles this semester. Come up with a quick list of possible topics for articles.
8. Review the student and alumni profiles associated with your program pages. Do you have profiles? Do they represent your program well? Consider updating the profiles.
9. If your site lists graduate student bios, review them for accuracy and for missing images or bio text. Remove any bios for people who are no longer with the program. Un-paid graduate students are not automatically added through the CHSSWeb imports. Notify the CHSSWeb team of any people who are new to the program and need to be added.
10. Review and fix broken links on your website. Each month we run a scan to help identify broken links. The results of that scan and tools for fixing any broken links can be found on your site's admin Dashboard.

Update & Purge

1. Review the list of editors who have access to your site. Let the CHSSWeb team know if any should be removed. You can find this list on the Dashboard below the Quick Links and Tools section. Click the "Site Editors" heading to view the editors. Keeping this access up to date is an important step toward keeping your website secure and making sure you know who is making changes to it.
2. Look through your site's content. Update or delete pages as necessary.
3. Delete content blocks that are unused (not on a page). If they are not on a page, they are not serving any purpose on your site.
4. Delete any links or documents which are no longer in use. Keep only those documents which you are actually using on your web site. If you wish to maintain copies of old, unused documents, download those documents and then delete them from the CHSSWeb system. Old documents stored on your website continue to be available in searches. The system sends a list of aging files to the site manager each Spring and Fall to help with this process.