Campus-related Website Guidelines

The following guidelines reference three audiences:

  1. Mission-critical: Referring to the mission of the Commonwealth Campus Web project to “attract, impress, and engage students,” this audience comprises prospective students, current students, and their families.
  2. Internal: This audience refers to employees of the campus (faculty and staff).
  3. External: This audience refers to alumni, donors, community members, etc.

If the primary audience for a campus-related webpage is mission-critical or external, the page should reside on the campus’s primary public site (altoona.psu.edu). Pages on the campus’s primary public site benefit from the following:

  • A consistent theme, branding, and navigation throughout the site
  • Content is included in the site’s internal search engine
  • Content is more likely to be picked up by external search engines
  • Content is curated by Google Analytics, providing valuable information for advertising
  • Site design adheres to current University accessibility standards

There are occasions when pages for mission-centric and/or external audiences may need to be hosted on a different platform. These may include the following:

  • University-related sites with specific branding guidelines, such as LaunchBox sites
  • Sites for events or conferences
  • Sites utilizing a blogging feature
  • Sites used by current students that require Penn State WebAccess Authentication

Official content, especially of a curricular nature (e.g. academic calendar, program requirements for admission or completion), should not be hosted on any webpage or website outside of the campus’s primary public site or the content's authoritative home (e.g. suggested academic plans, as maintained on the Undergraduate Bulletin). This content should be linked to and not replicated locally.

In all cases, the decision of where to host the pages will be made by the campus’s primary web administrator, Jonathan O'Harrow, director of strategic communications.

If the primary audience for a campus-related webpage is internal, the campus’s primary web administrator should be consulted to determine where the page should reside and which parties are responsible for maintaining the page and its content.

If it is determined that another platform is better suited to host a page and that individuals other than the campus’s primary web administrator plan to manage the maintenance of the page, the responsibilities of these individuals include the following:

Penn State supports a number of services to host content on the web.

  • Sites at Penn State: Utilizing WordPress as a content management system, Sites pages can be used for all audiences, including internal and external.
  • Microsoft Sharepoint: This product is integrated with Office365, is meant for internal audiences, and is protected by Web Access.

The campus’s primary web administrator has the final say on all decisions regarding where campus-related websites are hosted. All web pages are subject to review by the web administrator before being linked to the campus's website. The web administrator reserves the right to remove a link or not link to a webpage that is not in compliance with any of the above policies.

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Video Guidelines

All videos submitted for publication on the Penn State Altoona website and related platforms are subject to editorial review by the Strategic Communications staff. Though professional production quality is not required, videos should be of acceptable quality and content should align with the University's strategic goals.

Videos that fall under University Policy AD25's definition of a "marketing or promotional video" must be reviewed by the Department of University Marketing in Penn State's Office of Strategic Communications.

Closed-captioning

Per University Policy AD25, all videos posted to the college's Website and YouTube channel must be captioned. Offices and academic programs are responsible for providing caption information to the Office of Strategic Communications whenever a video is submitted.

Submitters may transcribe the videos manually and provide the transcription in a Microsoft Word document (timecodes not required) or take advantage of the following tools:

  • Microsoft Stream
    Stream is available to all Penn State Altoona students, faculty, and staff through Office 365. Videos uploaded to Stream can be auto-captioned and a caption file is available for download. Please note that captions produced by Stream should be reviewed and corrected before submitting to the Office of Strategic Communications.
  • Rev Captioning Service
    The Office of Strategic Communications has an account with Rev, an online service that provides captions for video and audio files at a cost. The office or program submitting the video will be billed for the captions. Current rates are $1.25 per minute of video (as of July 6, 2021).

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