Homepage editorial process

[Georgiana Cohen]

What is the editorial process for your university homepage? Specifically, I'm curious about:

- what type of content gets featured (news, events, blogs, social media, contests, etc.)
- number of people making decisions about what content gets featured
- what type of people are making those decisions (news editors, VPs/deans, designers/photographers, webmasters)
- how often updates are made

[Ann White]

I can tell you how we do it-

I work in marketing on the web team. We control the front page. I'm the content person, so I make a lot of those judgment calls.

For our specific design (www.oc.edu), there are a few guiding principles.

For the top four rotating stories/images, the first priority is a great picture. It's meant to be a visual impact more than news source. But then again, more and more lately it has become dictated by people above me as they want to push certain events, etc. So we work with what they want to see.

For the news stories listed below, standards are much less strict. Sometimes they're internal news, sometimes press releases, sometimes academic achievement, etc... They come through PR, marketing, and athletics.

We update as often as we have new info. Some times of the year it's multiple times a day, other times a couple of times a week.

So overall... it's usually our call, unless someone supersedes us.

[Ann White]

Thanks! Our senior web designer, Stephen Bell, made it. He's in this ning community somewhere. :)

[Brenden Sparks]

Our Public Affairs department is responsible for the rotating content on our university front page (Cal State Fullerton). Outside of the basic architectural links, news and events are the only things highlighted. Whenever someone wants something, they have to go to/through Public Affairs.

There are 5 full-time editors (some of them write) and 1 1/2 writers (one is part time). I'm not entirely sure how they make their decisions.

The main story is updated daily, with the calendar(s) and upcoming events being updated on an as-needed basis.