| The University of Bristol Information Services (ex-computing service)
| is pushing Zope (with mamgement screens)& a site with corporate banner
| & style sheet. Some depts. have gone with it, some want more autonomy
| (dept's are independent in many other ways). We have a page detailing
| corporate design standards, but people tend to do what they like...&
| it's hard to blame them considering the creative potential of the
| medium.
We looked at Zope, but decided it was too restrictive and didn't really do
what we wanted. We have enough people here to do everything Zope can do,
and better (Zope pages aren't written in plain HTML, if I understand
it correctly, which doesn't make it very easy to get the info out at
a later date.). It might be useful if you're one person trying to
do everything (web server, databases, design, style sheets, content etc).
| I think one answer is an official University site, covering all depts.,
| which also includes links to 'semi-unofficial' departmental home pages.
That's what we try to do, pretty much.
Kat
| > We have: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk
| >
| > Or at least, we've tried to. It's very difficult. You meet a lot of
| > resistance from people who just want to do things Their Way. Our general
| > policy has been that departments should have a 'corporate' home page at
| > the very least. Ideally, they should have corporate sub-pages too. Some
| > of them do, like, e.g. http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/english/
| > and some of them take our templates and, well, bugger about with them,
| > e.g. http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/classics/ and then some have done
| > something totally different, e.g. http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/business/
| > One school has recently gone to an outside company and had their entire
| > site redesigned at pretty enormous expense. No one actually okayed this,
| > they just did it without telling anyone, and now that they've spent so
| > much money, no one is willing to turn around and tell them they can't use
| > it. It's meant to be launching today, but it's not up yet
| > (http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/law/).
| >
| > We're still working on it. The best advice I can give you is to be
| > prepared for a -long- haul, and, get as much back up as you possibly
| > can. The more significant people behind you on this, the better.
| >
| > Kat
| >
| > ----------------------------------------
| > Dr Kat Street
| > Assistant Web Editor (Research)
| > Learning Support Services
| > Room 403, Cripps North
| > University of Nottingham
| > University Park, NG7 2RD
| >
| > Tel: 0115 9513222
| > Fax: 0115 9513353
| > Mobile: 0774 0345869
| > E-mail: [log in to unmask]
| > Web: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/~ulzkls
| > ----------------------------------------
| >
| > On Thu, 1 Nov 2001, Richard Tammar wrote:
| >
| > | Hello there!
| > |
| > | I've been asked by senior management at the University of Sussex to ensure
| > | that all University web-pages cohere with 'the corporate identity'. To this
| > | end I've been attempting to compose a policy document delineating a
| > | (minimum) level of 'branding' that must appear on every page by a certain
| > | date (likely to be in 2003).
| > |
| > | The University's servers hold over 30 000 pages of open-access information,
| > | and, whilst a proportion of these are managed by the central web team or
| > | happy-to-cohere information providers, the majority are owned by
| > | enthusiastic - and often iconoclastic - individuals across well over 100
|
| > | separate academic departments and research projects.
| > |
| > | My question is this: have any colleagues at UK universities implemented
| > | visual identity or branding policies across a large, distributed site such
| > | as this... and if so, how successful have they been? I would absolutely love
| > | to hear from you!
| > |
| > | Richard Tammar
| > | Website Manager
| > | University of Sussex
| > |
| >
|
| ----------------------
| Jez Butler, Computing Service
| Tel. (0117) 95 46893
| [log in to unmask]
| http://www.boum.co.uk
|
|
|