The content of pages must be accurate and up to date.

Academic and administrative units are responsible for the content, links, and images on pages that contain information about their areas and must designate an individual responsible for certifying that pages are consistent with University policies are accurate and up to date.

To assist the designated certifying officer monitor page freshness a system has been introduced by ITS to check page dates for all sites on the main university server and to deliver a graduated series of automated page update alerts commencing three (3) months prior to the expiry date.

For those documents with an expiry date set email warning to publisher:

• 3 month before expiry date

• 2 month before expiry date

• 1 month before expiry date

• in the last month, weekly before expiry date

• in the last week, daily before expiry date

• after expiry date, daily till updated

The Communications Office may remove a link to any page containing information not updated within the past 12 months.

To take advantage of this system please ensure that the relevant meta tag area of each page of your site is formatted as follows:

MetaTag: meta name='expiry-date'

Used for: Informing the date at which the document is no longer current.

Content: INSERT THE DATE THIS DOCUMENT EXPIRES format: YYYY-MM-DD

Example in HTML code:

<meta name='expiry-date' content='2000-02-15'>

MetaTag: meta name='maintained-by'

Content: INSERT THE NAME AND EMAIL ADDRESS OF THE PERSON WHO MAINTAINS THIS PAGE

Example in HTML code:

<meta name='maintained-by' content='Anne Seuling, a.seuling@unimelb.edu.au'>

The 'expiry-date' on every page should be set at a maximum of twelve months from the 'creation date' in the first instance. This timeline has been set so that page maintainers have an inbuilt contents check mechanism and to minimize out of date material.

4.1. Authorisation

The Head of Faculty/Department/administrative unit/ etc is responsible for ensuring that data on pages bearing her/his authorisation is current. Pages with non-current data may be removed.

The University requires that the following protocols appear at the bottom of every page in categories 1, 2 and 3:

Created: date the page was first created

Last modified: the date is automatically inserted by the server

Authorised by: senior staff member responsible for authorising the information

Maintained by: staff member maintaining the page this must be the name of a staff member and not simply a position title such as Webmaster.

Email: email address of maintainer to be written in full and linked.

Figure 7: Authorisation (Section 4.1)

4.2. Changes to main university homepages

The Communications Unit maintains the main Homepage and the three user Homepages.

Staff at the University are able to suggest changes to these pages by emailing the staff member currently responsible for their maintenance name and email address are at the bottom of the relevant pages. The Director, Communications must approve changes.

Requests for new links on one or more of the Homepages can be made by contacting Anne Seuling (Tel 8344 8079 email: a.seuling@unimelb.edu.au). The Director, Communications must approve these links.

Requests for a Special Announcement banner on one or more of the Homepages can be made by contacting Anne Seuling (Tel 8344 8079 email: a.seuling@unimelb.edu.au). The Director, Communications must approve special Announcements.

4.3. Consistency

It is recommended that individual areas of the University's site adopt a structure and terminology which is consistent with the University site as a whole.

The three User Homepages have two columns of links. Links on the left-hand side of the page are specific to that user-group and page, while links on the right hand side are generic and appear on all three pages.

Figure 8: Consistency (Section 4.3)

4.4. Faculty Sites

Faculty sites must include the following information, which will be linked to from the About the University section of the site. It is suggested that Faculties also link to this information from their About the Faculty pages.

• number of students

• number of staff

• international students (percentage of total)

• yearly budget (income sources, main categories of expenditure)

• research grants and summary of current awards and achievements

The following structure and terminology is recommended for use on Faculty Homepages. It is recognised that Faculties may have different information and that there will be some variations in structure and terminology.

Note: Square brackets [] indicate optional terminology.

About the Faculty

• Dean's Welcome

• Contacts

• Background

• Organisational Structure

• Committees & Societies

• Staff List

Departments

• Departments

• Centres

• Schools

Courses and programs

• Undergraduate

• Postgraduate

• Honours

• International Students

• Continuing Education

• Short Courses

• Access

Careers

Research [and industry]

• Cooperative Research Centres

• Current Projects

• Papers and Publications

• Funding Support

Events & Activities

• Public Lectures

• Student Activities

Alumni (Information for former students)

What's new

Created: April 1999
Last Modified: 23 October 2001
Authorised by: Director, Communications.