The UW Health web center manages the public website and intranet for the School of Medicine and Public Health. It also manages the UW Health public website and intranet (U-Connect).
The team also oversees the school’s primary Facebook, Twitter and YouTube pages and produces a variety of email communications, including the monthly SMPH e-News.
The web center includes content strategists, programmers, graphic designers, and social media and email marketing specialists. In most cases, faculty and staff will work with a content strategist on website updates.
The web center is located in the UW Health marketing and communications office at 301 S. Westfield Road. The team can be reached at smphweb@uwhealth.org.
The web center does not manage websites and social media for individual departments, centers, institutes and programs, but is happy to consult on strategy, best practices or design. Contact the team at smphweb@uwhealth.org.
Web center areas of expertise
- Content strategy
- Writing/editing
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Accessibility
- Front-end development (HTML, CSS, JavaScript)
- Back-end development (server and database administration)
- User experience/user interaction
- Responsive design
- Social media
How to request website or intranet updates
Contact the web team at smphweb@uwhealth.org. Most minor updates (e.g., updating a photo or simple text revisions) will be completed within three business days.
To submit an item for the events calendar, see this guide to adding events to the SMPH website.
For extensive updates or to add new sections of content, the turnaround time will depend on available resources and the project scope. The web center will not be able to complete extensive projects on short notice.
Process
The process of creating a new section of content may include all or some of these steps:
- Initial inquiry from faculty or staff member
- Followup from web center to set meeting to discuss project in more detail, including audience, goals, strategy, content development, project responsibilities and timeline
- Gathering or creation of source content and supporting materials, if needed, and editing of content
- Creation of draft web pages
- Draft pages shared with faculty or staff member
- Revisions and/or approval
- Pages published to website
Requests for custom websites
When a new website request falls within the scope of the web center’s work, it will be built within the framework of the existing public site or intranet, depending on audience. Examples of requests that are within scope include:
- Requests for websites or supporting content for any health professions program
- Supporting content for the school’s core administrative units
If the request is out of scope, the web center will in most cases recommend using UW-Madison’s WiscWeb WordPress Service. Examples that are out of scope include:
- Requests for individual lab websites
- Requests for new center or institute websites
- Requests to manage graduate program websites
- Any request that does not serve the strategic goals or mission, vision and values of the School of Medicine and Public Health
How to manage intranet content
The SMPH intranet is hosted by the WiscWeb WordPress Service. Administrative units can be granted access to WordPress to manage their own sections of the SMPH intranet.
Process
- Contact the web center at smphweb@uwhealth.org. The web center will follow up to discuss scope of work, objectives and goals, if necessary.
- Prospective content managers will be required to complete DoIT’s WordPress training.
- Upon completion, the web team will provide access to WordPress.
Rules
- Faculty and staff can only manage content for the administrative unit in which they work.
- The content contributor should be someone who will regularly interact with the site.
- Content contributors will adhere to the editorial and design style guides.
- Content contributors will follow best practices for responsive design and accessibility.
- No custom fonts, colors, text effects or other nonstandard typography or design elements can be used. This includes word clouds, blinking text and custom style sheets.
- The web center has final authority over the appearance of all content and may request changes on noncompliant pages.
- Tech support and general WordPress help is provided by DoIT. The web team can provide guidance on overall content strategy and project management.
Social media
The web center only manages the primary social media accounts for the School of Medicine and Public Health:
The web center does not have the authority to approve or deny social media accounts for individual programs, however, the team asks that groups think carefully before jumping into Facebook, Twitter or other platforms. Questions to consider include:
- Do I have a definable goal with social media?
- How will I know if I’m successful?
- Do I have enough content to justify a social media presence?
- Can my needs be met using existing social media channels?
Social media policies
Individuals or programs that use social media must take care not to violate patient privacy rules. Additional guidance can be found from existing social media policies: