Web Publishing Guidelines

What is web & digital governance?

Web governance, sometimes referred to as digital governance, is defined as the process of maintaining and managing an online presence in an organized way. The idea is to uphold your website to certain standards, whether that’s your own organization’s standards or following regulations or compliance standards, such as web accessibility standards. It all relates to providing the best user experience possible for your website visitors by ensuring quality, consistency, accessibility, searchability, and more.

Georgetown ISD models a federated approach

Federation is a form of governance in which groups in an organization recognize a central group’s right to set high-level guidelines but retain the freedom to make their own decisions within the bounds of those guidelines.

Nature of Web Governance

Web governance refers to people, policies, procedures, standards, and guidelines that govern the creation and maintenance of our official website. The governance structure exists to provide clarity regarding roles and responsibilities related to the maintenance and development of georgetownisd.org.

Note: This is a working document and is subject to change to meet the evolving web needs of the District.

Web Governance Document

Our Guiding Principles

Georgetown ISD will have a professional web presence.

This means our site will:

Be up to date with current technology and trends, including mobile responsiveness.
Follow consistent brand standards as outlined in the Brand Guidelines and other best practices documentation.
Be free of typos, broken links, missing images, or other technical deficiencies to the extent possible. To do this, web editors will commit to regular review and maintenance of their assigned pages/sites.
Include copy written in a smart but winsome voice that appeals to both prospective students and their families without minimizing the prestigious academic brand of Georgetown ISD.
Present content in web-friendly formats using short paragraphs, headlines, bulleted lists, keywords, and other industry-standard best practices for web writing.
Avoid redundant, outdated, or incorrect content.
Use only images which are optimized for the web.
Any videos that are being shared for educational purposes are probably best suited within Google Classroom or the district's LMS (learning management system). Otherwise, videos should only be shared if the editor has ownership or approval to share the content. If you're unsure about permissions to share video on your page/site, please contact web@georgetownisd.org.

Single, integrated site instead of a series of microsites

Georgetownisd.org design templates will be used consistently throughout all pages and sections of the site. Georgetownisd.org design template will be used consistently throughout all pages and sections of the site. If you have a need for a site that lives outside our content management system, please submit your request for consideration to the Web Governance Committee.

Strong focus on usability and user centered design

Strong focus on analytics and measurement

Strong focus on community ownership and responsibility for Strong focus on community ownership and responsibility for the web

A core responsibility of all departments and other groups on campus with a web presence is to uphold the integrity and quality of web content and communications to accomplish the overarching mission, work, and goals of the district. To accomplish this goal, each department or group shall clearly articulate those who are responsible for web content (monitoring, creating, and editing) and partner with the communications team to provide that person(s) with resources, training, and access required to perform these duties. Please refer to Roles and Responsibilities for more detail. Any department or campus who needs to update user access for their campus or department should contact the creative multimedia specialist at web@georgetownisd.org.

Content Relevancy, Currency, and Management

All electronic publications and imagery must follow Georgetown ISD and legal standards regarding copyright. Web editors must secure permission from the owner of the copyright when including copyrighted or trademarked material such as text, photographs, audio, video, graphics, maps, or logos, and include a permission statement or disclaimer as required by the owner of the copyright or trademark. For more information on copyright, visit the U.S. Copyright Office website.

Strong focus on accessibility

Strong commitment to iterative design approach

Guidelines/Compliance/Ownership

Georgetown ISD’s website, www.georgetownisd.or g is the sole property of Georgetown ISD. While certain staff will have access to edit the site, create content, and remove content, the site domain and all its sub-sites remain the property of the district.

The website provides a primary platform to showcase the district and project a positive image of Georgetown ISD. Guidelines that encourage clarity, accuracy, and consistency are essential to the district's online presence. This document aims to cover all areas of web governance, but if you have questions that are not answered upon reviewing this, please contact web@georgetownisd.org.

The website provides a primary platform to showcase the district and project a positive image of Georgetown ISD. Guidelines that encourage clarity, accuracy, and consistency are essential to the district’s online image. This document aims to cover all areas of web governance, but if you have questions that are not answered upon reviewing this, please contact web@georgetownisd.org.

The communications team has access to all areas of the Georgetown ISD and campus websites and to ensure quality control, will edit/alter content as needed for clarity, grammar, spelling, usage, and style, as well as to conform with district naming conventions and branding. The district reserves the right to revise or delete content housed either on district managed resources or external resources that do not meet acceptable use guidelines or the standards outlined in this document.

Roles/Permissions

Finalsite content management system (CMS) permissions are determined by user groups, which are determined by the area of the site a user needs access to. If specific needs are determined (e.g., certain users can only have access to a section of the website), site directors and/or web editors (the people in charge of the campus websites or webpages for their department/grade level), should contact the creative multimedia specialist at web@georgetownisd.org.

Web content owners should also contact the communications team if site directors and web editors should no longer have permission to edit the site.

Quality Control/Workflow

Site directors and web editors are responsible for determining their own internal workflow. It may be that the site director is the content owner, or that there are multiple site directors who manage a campus site. The same applies to department web editors - there may be one or multiple people responsible for the content.

Regardless of the structure, when your campus or department makes changes to existing content, have a second person review the webpage(s) content before you publish it.

If a blatant spelling mistake(s), factual error(s), or other errors related to brand standards appear on a page, the communications team reserves the right to correct the page and contact the writer/editor responsible to advise taking more care when making or reviewing changes. If this is a recurring problem, the communications team will relay the concern to the manager of the area and may suspend editing privileges until it is resolved. It is imperative that we all work together to keep the website free of typos, bad grammar, etc. and consistent in style and quality.

Training/Education

All GISD staff have log-in access to the district’s website via Single Sign-On (SSO) authentication. This provides staff with access to password-protected information. Site directors and web editors who have been formally trained will be given access to the content management system for editing. Members of the communications team are responsible for initial training, after which editors may contact the creative multimedia specialist (x6075) or consult the training materials on Google Drive. Users may also call the creative multimedia specialist (x6075) for help on specific projects or challenges. Users may not share their username or password with others.

Written Content/Messaging/Branding

Our goal is to speak directly, answer questions, and give information as concisely and clearly as possible without overwhelming readers with too much text. User studies show that web visitors are task oriented, meaning they skim and scan to gather just enough information to get to their next destination. Subheadings and bulleted and numbered lists are tools to help us achieve these goals.

So that we convey a clear and consistent message, it is critical for all parts of the site to use the district's visual identifiers (logos) and naming conventions and style outlined in the GISD Brand Guidelines.

Visual Content

Georgetown ISD is committed to using photography that meets a high professional standard. When posting photos on the site, use primarily documentary-style photography that captures authentic and vibrant interactions among students, teachers, and staff. Consider if stock images are necessary. If used, ensure they are accessible and that you have permission to use/share them. Remember to show equity and diversity whenever it is possible to do so in an authentic way that does not appear staged or contrived. If posting photos of students, check photo permissions in Skyward in advance.

Site directors and web editors are responsible for the individual campuses and departments are responsible for photos on their pages. The communications team maintains a digital library of professional campus and district photos that can be made available to users. The communications team is happy to help you find, size, and place images, including rotating banners and widget images, on your page.

One of our governing principles is the importance of making our site accessible to all users. In support of this priority, when adding photos, you should include “Alt Text” in Blackboard so that those who are visually impaired and using text browsers can know what your picture or illustration looks like. If you don’t know how to add alt text, contact the creative multimedia specialist (x6075) for help. Keeping your alt text shorter is better: A good rule of thumb is between 5 and 15 words.

PDFs

All PDFs must meet ADA guidelines and should include District/Campus branding.

Do not use or link PDFs unless necessary. Information should be housed on the website and within the CMS as native content when possible. If a PDF is necessary, it must be an accessible document.

Information about creating accessible PDFs can be found on the WebAIM site at http://webaim.org/techniques/acrobat/.

Social Media and New Technologies

Social media use by campuses and departments is encouraged for storytelling if appropriate team member(s) are assigned for management. Best practice indicates that no one person should have sole access or ownership over district social media accounts and posting and review should happen regularly.

Please view our district social media resources and Rules of Engagement for more information.

Measurement

Content Management System (CMS)

All public-facing content will be held and propagated to the site using the approved Finalsite CMS and its implemented version. No other software product may be used within Georgetown ISD’s approved CMS and build architecture without prior approval from the Web Governance Committee. If you require additional web functionality, please contact the communications team (web@georgetownisd.org) before pursuing third-party options. In accordance with our guiding principles, all site directors and department editors are expected to ensure all links are live, tested, and appropriately implemented.

Archiving Content

Finalsite has the ability to make content ‘inactive” and not viewable to the public. Any content that does not need to be made publically available and can be removed, should be. Pages that are outdated but possibly needed in the future, should be made “inactive” or otherwise stored/recorded. It is up to the responsible department to make sure those records are saved appropriately.

Noncompliance

Site directors and/or department editors that violate the aforementioned protocols and brand guidelines will receive email notification from the communications team and have 10 business days to address violations. If no attempt is made to address violations within 10 business days, the content owner(s) of the department/division will be contacted and will have five business days to address violations. If no attempt is made to address violations within this timeframe, the communications team will notify the administration of that department/campus and take the necessary action to address any content in violation of the guidelines directly.

If three or more violations occur within a six-month period, the department’s content owner will be contacted by the director of communications and community engagement, who will develop a corrective plan of action. Continued and egregious violations will incur significant penalties, up to the removal of editing and publishing privileges for individuals or a department.

The communications team will make every effort to work with site directors and web editors to address violations and assist in any necessary website update.

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