Web Publishing

Service Description

The web publishing service allows staff and students to create and publish institutionally-hosted websites. It can be used to promote and disseminate University business relating to research, teaching and corporate activities; or to support group activities and reflect on academic life. 

Web publishing comprises four main areas:

  • Research and Conference Web Publishing
  • Staff, Student, Society Websites
  • Corporate Web Publishing
  • Blogs

The IT Service (NUIT) maintain and develop the technical infrastructure to support these services.

Features

Research and Conference Web Publishing:

  • Sites for research projects and conferences are published on research.ncl.ac.uk or conferences.ncl.ac.uk using the T4 CMS
  • A customisable, mobile responsive template with social media integration is provided
  • User-friendly dashboard for managing pages and files (no technical knowledge required)

Staff, Student, Society Websites

  • Uses the WordPress platform with a user-friendly dashboard for managing pages and files (no technical knowledge required)
  • Offers a number of mobile-responsive templates (themes) with social media integration

Corporate Web Publishing

  • Websites for academic units, services and research Institutes and centers, developed by the Corporate Web team.
  • Sites are published on the ncl.ac.uk domain with the T4 Content Management System (CMS)

Blogs

  • Members of the University can publish a personal or team blog at blogs.ncl.ac.uk
  • Uses the WordPress platform with a user-friendly dashboard for managing pages and files (no technical knowledge required)
  • Offers a number of mobile-responsive templates (themes) with social media integration

General features

  • All sites are indexed by the University’s search engine (a Google Search Appliance).
  • A form building tool is available for the creation and administration of web forms.
  • Google Analytics is used to evaluate the performance of University websites

Users

Research and Conference Web Publishing: University staff and students; however, the site owner must be a registered member of staff.

Staff, Student, Society Websites: University staff, students, societies and groups.

Corporate Web Publishing: University staff via the Corporate Web Development team.

Blogs: University staff, students and groups.

Service Hours

Consultation and guidance: 09:00-17:00, Monday to Friday, excluding University closure periods.

Services are available 24 hours, 7 days a week. The “at risk” period is 07:00-09:00 every Tuesday.

Level of Service

Backups are taken daily for disaster recovery.

In the event of hardware failure, please see Server Platform Provision for details of resilience and service restoration.

Support and Documentation

Further information is available:

A summary of the rules and policies for University Web Publishing is available at www.ncl.ac.uk/itservice/web/rules

The public presentation of University information should follow the guidelines developed by Corporate Web Development on the Digital Design Site​. ​

Technical support is available via the IT Service Desk on 0191 208 5999 or https://nuservice.ncl.ac.uk 

All incidents relating to this service will be handled according to the IT Service Incident Management and Major Incident Management processes.

Request Process

Corporate Websites

Use NUService to request a new development or update a web page, ie removing or restructuring sections. These request types can be found under the 'Non-Central IT' category.

Research and Conference Websites

Staff, Student, Society Websites and Blogs

Requests for any other aspect of the service should be made via the IT Service Desk on 0191 208 5999 or https://nuservice.ncl.ac.uk 

All requests relating to this service will be handled according to the Request Fulfilment process.

User Responsibility

All pages on the corporate web publishing infrastructure are subject to the Web Publishing Guidelines.

Corporate Web Development are responsible for the structure, design, quality standards, support and coordination of all publishers to the www.ncl.ac.uk domain.

For non-corporate websites, structuring and the use of a publishing tool are the user’s responsibility.

External developers may be commissioned for University websites; however, the IT Service must be consulted in advance. A Newcastle University member of staff must be the main contact for a site, with responsibility for all content hosted.

The web publishing platform does not support the installation of 3rd party applications, including content management systems (such as Drupal). These are forbidden by the rules of use: http://www.ncl.ac.uk/itservice/web/rules/.

Costs

The hosting of the web publishing service is centrally funded, as is the development of official sites on www.ncl.ac.uk by the Corporate Web Development team.

Costs may be incurred where external domain names are registered or the services of external agencies are commissioned. These costs are the responsibility of the user.