LANDING PAGE

Department Tools Landing Page

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he Department Tools Landing Page tool will allow you to create a more dynamic home page presence with easy-to-use news and photo features and highlighted links. The Landing Page will also improve the user experience by providing a strong arrival point and by making information features more consistent across wichita.edu web pages. Best of all: The Landing Page administration is easy to understand and use, with instructions on each page and phone, email and one-on-one support available. The process of launching a Landing Page requires four basic steps. 1. Enter your content for each feature using the corresponding “edit” button. 2. When you have a feature looking the way you want it, click the “Mark This Feature Done” button. 3. When each of the seven features is marked “done,” click the “Launch my Landing Page” button. 4. University Relations will review and activate the landing page. The Administration Menu This is the central point for creating and launching a landing page. You can think of the Administration Menu page as the lobby of a building. From here, you’ll go into one of the seven “rooms” indicated by the yellow bars below and enter your content. Then you’ll return to the Administration Menu “lobby” and enter the next room. The seven content areas are: • Top Image • Page Text • Black Bar Navigation • Right-Hand Navigation • Social Media • News Section • Program Details When a content area is completed, the bar will change from yellow (Draft) to green (Done). When all the content areas are completed, the large “Launch my Landing Page” button will become active. More on that process later.

Fig. 1 (above): A completed Landing Page. Fig. 2 (below): An Administration Menu page. This example has all of the content areas completed except “Page Text.”

Wichita State University • Office of University Relations • (316) 978-3436

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Complete Instructions — LANDING PAGE Top Image (required) In DT Landing Page, you can have up to five “top images” that will rotate randomly on refresh. This will allow you to show off various facets of your department or organization and help keep the site looking fresh for return users. The images must meet the following size guidelines: • The file format must be jpg. • The color mode must be RGB. • The size must be 560 pixels wide by 260 pixels tall. • The resolution must be 72 dpi. The process is to size an image on your computer, then upload it to the site using the “Choose File” and “Upload” buttons. (see inset at right for sizing help.) When you have your photos uploaded (NOTE: You must have at least one photo uploaded to use the DT Landing Page), click the “Mark This Feature Done” button in the bar at the bottom of the page. Return to the Administration Menu when you are through.

Page Text (required) You should think of Page Text as the elevator speech you would give to a prospective student who knows nothing about your department. Page text is limited to 850 characters to keep the message tight and on point. The text should not include a headline. DT Landing Page pulls the headline from your account name to ensure strong search engine results Academic departments should develop text that works to sell the department to the prospective, perhaps including department strengths or other aspects that separate WSU from the competition. Nonacademic departments might require a simple explanation of your services or functions. Either way, you should keep the audience in mind and avoid technical jargon and acronyms that won’t be familiar to the readers. At the end of this process, when you submit the site to University Relations, our staff may make minor changes to your text that will help improve the page’s ranking with search engines like Google and Bing. This will be a collaborative process leading up to the

Sizing top images for DT Landing Page

There are two types of people in the world: Those who have access to Adobe Photoshop and those who don’t. If you’re in the latter camp, you can create DT Landing Page photos using a free online photo editing tool. On the Top Image page, there’s a link to step-by-step instructions for cropping and sizing an existing image without skewing or pixilating. (There are also step-by-step instructions and a template for Photoshop users.) In either case, you can always give us a call if you need help.

launch. (NOTE: If you would like help writing copy for this space, contact Tim Hart at 978-6192 or tim. [email protected].) Unlike Top Image, you’ll need to save your work using the “Save” button. When you have the text looking the way you want it, click the “Mark This Feature Done” button and return to the Administration Menu.

Black Bar Navigation (required) Black Bar Navigation is place to highlight several links that will be of special interest to your users. You may add as many links as space permits. Use the preview image to tell when you’re out of characters Happily, you should already be familiar with the interface for Black Bar Nav, which is a repurposed version of the DT Links Administration Tool. The only difference is that the topmost link in the administration interface will appear first moving from left to right. Links in this list will only appear on the Landing Page. When you have the links looking the way you want them, click the “Mark This Feature Done” button and return to the Administration Menu.

Wichita State University • Office of University Relations • (316) 978-3436

Complete Instructions — LANDING PAGE 3

Fig. 3: The Top Image

Fig. 4: Page Text

Fig. 5: Black Bar Navigation

Fig. 6: Right-Hand Navigation

Wichita State University • Office of University Relations • (316) 978-3436

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Complete Instructions — LANDING PAGE Right-Hand Navigation (required) This tool allows you to build a custom navigation to highlight important or frequently accessed links. Links in this list will only appear on the Landing Page. When you have the links looking the way you want them, click the “Mark This Feature Done” button and return to the Administration Menu.

Social Media (optional) The Social Media tool standardizes the way Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites are presented on WSU websites. All you do is check the boxes and paste in the site URL (Remember that URLs must contain “http://”). Then hit the “Save” button in the yellow bar. When you’re done, the links to social media sites will appear under the Featured Links and display the icon for the social media site. We’ve only included the four most-used social media sites here -- but if there are others that you use, give us a call or send an email and we’ll add it for you. When you have the feature looking the way you want it click the “Mark This Feature Done” button and return to the Administration Menu.

Fig. 7: Social Media

News Section (optional) One of the best ways to promote your department and keep your site fresh is to include a news feature. The News Section allows you to display automatically updating news from an RSS feed or WSU News tag, or you can create custom stories that will remain in place until you delete them. You can place this news feature on all pages of your DT Account by checking the provided box. To select an RSS feed, use the pulldown menu to access preset RSS feeds from WSU News tags or to enter the URL of an external RSS feed that you get from an existing blog or the DT Newsletter tool. The News Section will display the four most-recent stories

Fig. 8: News Section

Wichita State University • Office of University Relations • (316) 978-3436

Complete Instructions — LANDING PAGE 5 in chronological order top to bottom under the heading “In the News.” Custom stories must have both a headline and URL to display. That can be as simple as taking the headline and URL from a Wichita Eagle story. For internally generated stories, you can create a new DT Page, writing a headline and story and using that URL. You may enter up to four custom stories and they can be used in tandem with an RSS feed. In this arrangement, custom stories always appear at the top of the story list with RSS stories filling in below. Even if you’re not using the News Section as a regular feature, you can use custom stories to make temporary front page announcements like “Office closed May 25.” It’s important to remember, though, that custom stories -- unlike RSS Feed stories -- will remain in place until you remove them. Any changes you make in the News Section interface must be saved before they will appear. When you have the feature looking the way you want it, click the “Mark This Feature Done” button and return to the Administration Menu.

Program Details (optional) This feature is for academic departments only. If the site is not for an academic department, simply click the “Mark This Feature Done” button and return to the administration menu. Academic departments should use the interface to navigate to your college and check all majors that

Fig. 9: Program Details

apply to your department. These will appear at the top of the right-hand navigation under the heading “Program Details.” The short descriptions for Program Details are pulled from the “Majors and Programs” page on the wichita. edu Web site. If you have suggested changes for these descriptions, please send them to University Relations via the “Suggest changes here” below the description. When you have made your selections, click the “Save” button. When you’ve got all the relevant information included, click the “Mark This Feature Done” button and return to the Administration Menu.

Launching a Landing Page

Fig. 10: Ready to launch

When all the bars are green on the Administration Menu, the “Launch My Landing Page” button will be activated. When you’re ready to move forward, just click the button to submit the site to University Relations for copyediting and search engine optimization. We may also make suggestions about photos and other features. Wichita State University • Office of University Relations • (316) 978-3436

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Complete Instructions — LANDING PAGE This process will be collaborative and conducted mainly via email. When we’re all agreed that the site is ready to go, University Relations will throw the switch and the Landing Page will become live, replacing the index page in your account. (NOTE: If your account doesn’t use the Index page as the home page, an additional redirect may be required.) —————— This completes the online training for the DT Landing Page feature. This training is also available online at http://www.wichita.edu/landingpage. If you have questions or need clarification, please contact Bryan Masters (978-3436 or bryan.masters@ wichita.edu) or Tim Hart (978-6192 or tim.hart@ wichita.edu).

Where did my index page go?

When the landing page is approved, University Relations will launch the site and you will receive e-mail notification. At that point, your current index page will be automatically redirected to the Landing Page and its content will no longer be visible to site visitors. If there is information on the current index page that is still important to users, you’ll need to relocate it elsewhere on the site. One way to do this is to click on the red “index” page in your tree, duplicate the page using the “Save As” button and rename the page. Often “About Us” is a logical choice, allowing you to go more in-depth about your department with a “Learn More” link in the Page Text area.

Wichita State University • Office of University Relations • (316) 978-3436