Tips for Creating Digital Content

When creating content for SLU.edu, your first priority should be the user. Most often, that is a prospective student, families and alumni.

Your site should be intuitive and easy to use, so people can quickly find what they need, even if they are unfamiliar with the University and its departmental structure.

All slu.edu content must be original. If it is necessary to quote content from elsewhere, it should be used sparingly and attributed appropriately. Academic citation style is not appropriate for web content. For questions about copyright, please view the University Copyright Compliance and Use Policy.
All information on slu.edu must meet the requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act and comply with WCAG best practices. Please pay particular attention to these best practices as they relate to assets such as PDFs and images.
You should have a strategic goal for each page you create or maintain on the site. Common goals are recruitment, enrollment and student support. When working on content for slu.edu:
- Consider what key tasks must be completed on each page. The most important or relevant information should be at the top.
- When marketing SLU, explain what is unique or different about your program, degree, office, etc. Include answers to frequently asked questions, relevant facts and figures and elements such as endorsements whenever possible.
- Every word matters. Most content on slu.edu is found via search engines rather than through the site navigation. The words you use in website copy, headlines and links let search engines gauge how relevant SLU.edu is to a search. Users generally will only read a small portion of website content, so use headlines, subheads, bullets, bolding and other formatting to help make your key points.
- Information should not be duplicated throughout slu.edu. This causes issues with search and content management. General information about the University, such as the campus map and the mission statement, has already been developed. Rather than recreating or cutting and pasting the information into your web page, please link to the top-level content.
- New pages on slu.edu should contain a significant amount of information useful to a user. While there is not a specific word count, a current rule of thumb would be at least 300 words (this may include headings and subheadings) that are engaging and relevant. Similar topics may be (and often should be) grouped together.
Do not draft copy inside the CMS. Drafts of written content for the website should be developed using collaborative tools such as Google Docs/Drive or Microsoft OneDrive. The CMS is not a place for test content, drafts or placeholder pages.
Saint Louis University uses the Associated Press Stylebook (AP Style) and the Saint Louis University Writing Style Guide to ensure consistency of written content for all University publications, digital or print. If you are not familiar with AP Style, we recommend consulted a printed version or accessing www.apstylebook.com with questions.
Always spell check content in all fields - body copy, headlines and titles. If possible, have someone else proofread your work. Run the spell check function in the CMS again before submitting a page to be publish and ensure there are no broken links on the page.
Do not use "Last Updated" or "Under Construction" lines. Update your content as often as it requires and do not launch new content before it is ready.
As with any content provided on behalf of the University, all SLU websites must comply with the following University and federal policies:

Photos

Photos and videos are communication tools, not merely decoration for the page. They should convey information and provide visual interest by breaking up text.
Photos should not contain text or other design elements.
Photos should be single images, not compilations or montages. A slideshow feature is available to display multiple images.
Images on slu.edu must comply to pre-determined sizes. In most cases, on Universal pages, these include:
- 960x640 px
- 720x480 px
- 480x720 px
- 480x320 px
Resize large (over 500KB) images and files for use on the web. Large file sizes will not be approved. The size of a image refers to the amount of memory it requires. A image's size is determined not only by height and width but also by how color information is encoded, which is determined by the file format, which most often should be JPG.
You must complete the "Title" and "Description" to give the image a brief description for screen readers/accessibility purposes, as well as search engine optimization.
You must own the images uploaded to slu.edu and have permission to use likenesses not covered under the photo/video/audio recording policy in SLU's student handbook.

Links

If you link to an external page, form, PDF or other document from SLU.edu, ensure it opens in a new browser window. Links to PDFs or forms should also open in a new window. Pages that end in slu.edu/within the content management system should open in the same window.
Include a link to SLU.edu in every email you send and, if possible, on social media posts featuring Saint Louis University.

CMS Access and Best Practices

Per Saint Louis University policy, unless a specific exception is granted by the vice president for the Division of Marketing and Communications, all web pages, web microsites and web content must be housed within Saint Louis University's content management system (CMS), Modern Campus.

Learn More About the University's Web Content Management Policy

Accessing the University Content Management System (CMS)

Editing slu.edu is a serious responsibility, as its content represents Saint Louis University in an official capacity. Users are responsible for contributing high-quality written and visual material that aligns with the content strategy for slu.edu.

CMS users must be full-time employees of Saint Louis University, undergo training in the system and agree to terms and conditions of use. Students, including graduate students and student interns, may not have access to the CMS.
CMS users for sections of slu.edu should be appointed by the dean, vice president or other leadership for the area of web content being edited. Employees chosen to edit the website should have excellent writing and editing skills but advanced technical skills are not required.
All CMS users will be placed into a workflow for edited content to be reviewed by Marcom employees.
Users may edit text, images and other assets on the site but may not access source code or alter existing stylesheets and templates.
All pages on slu.edu, with the exception of news and feature content, must be in the site navigation. SLU's site navigation is standard, meaning that it works the same way in every section. Each section, or folder, of the website has a navigation or sub-navigation that should not be altered. Changes to the information architecture or navigation logic of slu.edu are handled by the Division of Marketing and Communications.
CMS users must be aware that deleting pages or most uploaded files requires additional action by the CMS administrative team to ensure proper removal from the CMS, SLU.edu, and search engines, and to prevent broken links or 404 errors. All removal requests must be submitted through the CMS Help Form and completed by the CMS administrative team.

CMS User Training

In becoming a CMS user, you partner with the Division of Marketing and Communications. After completing the training course and passing a quiz, users must also fill out an agreement to use slu.edu appropriately.

Basic User Training

Prior to completing training in the CMS, employees should review the guidance on this page, have the permission of their dean or vice president and coordinate with any existing users for their area and the marketing professionals assigned to their unit, if applicable. The aprover for your access must be submitted on the CMS request form that is supplied once the CMS training has been successfully passed.

Only full-time employees of SLU are eligible for CMS accounts. Students should not take this training and are not permitted to have account access.

To access the CMS training modules, users must be logged into SLU systems using their SLU Net ID and password. Please note that your SLU email address will not function correctly as your SLU username.

Due to system security, you may be required to logout of any personal Google/G-Mail accounts before accessing your SLU Google account.

Launch Basic (CMS) Training

Please note that the quiz and user agreement presented at the end of this training must be completed for an account to be created.

Advanced Feature Training

In addition to the basic training materials, Marcom has developed the following modules to provide guidance on advanced features of the CMS. All users may not have access to all features.

Questions? Contact marcom@slu.edu.

Assistance for CMS Users

In addition to the training above, our team can help answer questions about content development and assist with technical concerns by starting a request for the Marcom digital team. Note: This form is not for general ITS assistance or help with logging into SLU systems.

Request Assistance