World Wide Web Policy

The purpose of the East Stroudsburg University (ESU) website is to support and effectively communicate information of interest concerning the university to prospective students and families, as well as other specific audiences such as the general public, university alumni and the internal ESU community, through the World Wide Web.

Reason for Policy

The website is the university’s primary point of information about ESU and its services, therefore the website must provide a clear and consistent experience to visitors.

Official Websites

The official ESU website and website branding encompasses and applies to all university colleges, academic departments and programs, administrative offices, sub-sites and website applications. Exceptions include unofficial websites (see below) and extraordinary single event sites.

The Official website template enables and enforces consistent branding, navigation, usability factors, web accessibility compliance, and responsive design for mobile, tablet and desktop devices. It also provides a consistent editing environment with rich content options for content creators across the university

ESU Homepage

The ESU homepage banners are used to highlight stories that rise above our daily press releases. These are stories that:

• celebrate the success of ESU students, faculty alumni and the university itself
• are aimed at the main homepage audience, prospective students and their families, and are not general informational updates (e.g., general events, professor award, HR updates)

The ESU homepage promotional tiles provide a designated space for university divisions to publicize content to prospective students and families. One tile each is designated for the divisions of Enrollment Management, Academic Affairs, Campus Life and Inclusive Excellence, and Economic Development and Entrepreneurship, and the Office of Marketing and Communications. Requests to place content on the home page should be directed to the relevant division's designated staff member. Space on the home page is limited, and as such, priorities are those of the divisional vice president based on the size of the intended adience and support of university goals.

Link requests for the homepage and site-level navigation should be directed to the director of web services. Links are intended to address the homepage's primary audience of prospective students and families.

Unofficial ESU Websites
Unofficial websites are sites hosted by ESU for university approved individuals, groups, organizations and clubs. These websites include personal faculty and staff websites as well as approved university group, club and organization websites.

Unofficial websites are not acceptable replacements for official university websites or pages. In addition, unofficial websites should never claim to be the official source of information for university content and/or drive users to unofficial websites at the expense of official websites.

Because unofficial websites are hosted by and affiliated with the university, they must be kept current, accurate, and free of broken links or other technical errors.

Student Organization Websites

Approved and recognized ESU student group, organization and club websites must be hosted by ESU or the ESU Student Activity Association in order to use ESU branding, receive support, and in order to be linked to by official ESU web pages. Exceptions for web pages hosted by national or state organizations may be made at the discretion of the director of web services.

All approved and recognized student group, organization and club websites will be under the oversight of the executive director of ESU's Student Activities Association and will be provided at his or her discretion. The student organization's advisor will serve as the supervisor of the specific organizational website and bear responsibility for the content and maintenance of the organization's website.

Personal Websites

East Stroudsburg University allows creation of personal websites on university equipment as a service to the university community. Personal websites are considered unofficial websites and are not part of the university's official website.

• The university allows for personal pages that provide information about an individual that is relevant to that individuals role at the university.
• East Stroudsburg University resources may not be used to create web pages primarily for personal business or personal gain.
• The official ESU home page will not link directly to personal pages.
• The views expressed on these pages are strictly those of the individual authors and the following statement will appear on all pages indicating this: "The views and opinions expressed in this page are strictly those of the page author. The contents of this page have not been reviewed or approved by East Stroudsburg University."
• The term Webmaster shall not be used to identify the author of any personal website.
• East Stroudsburg University will investigate all complaints involving personal websites. The university reserves the right to monitor personal websites and to remove or block material that violates federal or state law or university policy.

Outsourcing
The engagement of external website vendors for the purposes of designing or creating university web pages is strongly discouraged.

All requests for external website services must be reviewed by the director of web services.

External Links
East Stroudsburg University does not control or guarantee the accuracy, relevance, timeliness or completeness of information of external websites that may be linked to through the official website or through unofficial websites.

Accessibility
In accordance with the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), East Stroudsburg University strives to ensure that all users, regardless of disability, can access official university websites. As such, all university web pages-official and/or unofficial-must comply with the WIA Web Content Accessibility Guidelines located at W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative. Details can be found at our Accessibility webpage.

Appeal Statement

N/A

Definitions

Website – A group of related web pages accessed from a single point or domain through the internet. A web page is a text document that incorporates text and digital files through a markup language.

Home page – The initial or starting index page of a website. The first page served when visiting a website.

Website Branding – The graphical layout, colors, fonts and logos used in a website’s design.

Website Template - the common structure of web pages throughout a website, including shared elements such as headers & footers and a consistent design for optional content elements.

Sub-sites – Smaller self-contained websites that are located or served from below the top level domain of a main website.

Website Applications – Programs running and/or providing a service on the website.

Personal Websites and Personal Pages – Websites and webpages that represent an individual or group rather than the organization. Commonly contain personal rather than organizational information.

Web Master – The person responsible for maintaining a website and supervising website access and content. External Website Vendors – Contractors and outside vendors who sell website-related services including website design and website hosting.

Other Relevant Information

N/A