Getting started

Our website development process guide details each step you'll take to create your site. This is a great resource for helping you create project timelines for each phase and keeping you on track.

We’ll ask you and your team to complete this questionnaire before we meet to kickoff your project. Your answers help us plan in advance for special needs, including whether you wish to change the URL of an existing website, if we'll need to build in features to accommodate multimedia or if you have a tight deadline for launching your site.

Organizing your website

We use site maps—visual representations of how each page of your website flows into the next—to help you organize your site in a way that makes sense to users.

Use this sample document as a reference for how we approach this step. When we enter the phase of the project when we discuss you site’s structure—information architecture—we’ll work with you to create a site map specifically for your project.

Content inventories are great ways to keep track of each page of your website, the content you plan to have on each and the people you task with managing this content.

Once our teams finalize your site map, you can use a spreadsheet similar to this one to begin plotting out where your content will live.

You can personalize your content inventory to your project with fields that track content due dates, content update reminders and other helpful information.

Creating Web content

People read and digest content differently online than they do print media. This guide shares tips on how to write effectively for a Web audience while getting across your key messages.

Writing for the Web Presentation

Watch a presentation on the principles and best practices of writing for the Web, including skimmability, clarity and basic search engine optimization. 

Use this guide to ensure your content follows the grammar, spelling and style rules that DU dictates for all its websites.

Read about how where and how to use keywords, links and other tools to help search engines such as Google easily find and connect more users to your content.

When you’re ready to begin putting the above guides into practice, download this sheet to enter your content. This content entry document contains important fields—such as your page title and keywords—that you must provide when you create your site in DU's content management system.

You’ll use this document for each page of your website.

Designing your website

Visit this section of our website to see examples of how you can lay out the content for your new site. DU’s Web template gives you flexibility to distinguish your program/organization while presenting it within the University’s overarching branded layout.

Building and maintaining Your Site

While our team will largely be responsible for writing the development code that will make your site function properly, you'll need to learn how to work within our content management system, OmniUpdate, to enter and update content. Before you can do this, however, you must attend a training session. Anyone managing or updating content within the system should attend this session.

We’ll use the information you provided about special site needs in the project questionnaire (and throughout the process) to develop and make those features available during your training session.

To set up OmniUpdate training, contact Mary Sue Brown at mbrown27@du.edu. 

OmniUpdate Support Documentation

Handouts and FAQs on maintaining your site in OmniUpdate.