Website Guidelines

The official University of New England website (b2s.dbctl.com) presents the University to a wide variety of audiences, including prospective and current students, faculty, and professional staff; alumni; donors; the local community; and the general public.

Our site is primarily intended as a recruiting tool for prospective students. It also serves as a tool for current faculty, students, and professional staff, allowing them to access our academic catalog, library services, and more. Finally, the site represents UNE to the public, showcasing our brand; sharing stories; and publicizing our programs and events that enrich the community.

In addition to the central UNE website, the Office of Communications maintains a set of WordPress sites. These UNE-branded sites include an easy-to-learn management system that allows site publishers to autonomously manage content on their sites. The sites are available to all current faculty and professional staff for the purpose of showcasing their research, academic interests, and UNE-related work. The sites are expected to amplify faculty work to internal and external audiences with content that augments our primary site. 

To learn more about UNE-branded WordPress sites visit sites.dbctl.com

If you are looking for help with your existing WordPress fill out the sites.dbctl.com support form

The central UNE website consists of more than 150 subsites that represent different official units across the University. To ensure that our site remains relevant and easy to navigate for our users, we maintain a set of guidelines around creating and maintaining subsites. The following units may request their own subsites:

• Colleges
• Schools
• Academic Departments
• Centers and Institutes
• Administrative Units (e.g., Student Affairs, Institutional Research)
• Major central annual events (e.g., Commencement, Orientation)

​Other requests are handled on a case-by-case basis. In order to warrant a unique subsite, content must be robust and require its own navigation — in other words, if your content is a single page, it is not eligible. 

Managing Subsite Edits

The Office of Communications and Marketing manages all updates for dbctl.com. Since only the communications team has access to certain features, this is the most efficient way to make your updates. Our web team can also help you to optimize your page layouts and edit your content to ensure compliance with our writing and style guidelines and accessibility standards. If you’d like to make changes to your subsite, please submit your requests using our website request form.

Content Coordinators

The Office of Communications and Marketing relies on departments to check their website section regularly and request updates on dated information. We ask that each department assign a team member to be “content coordinator” who will review web sections regularly and request updates from Communications. The website request form can be used by the content coordinator (or any staff member) to request web changes at any time.

If your site requires frequent, minor edits to web copy, your unit may designate one site editor. Once the site editor completes the required web training, they may submit their updates through the site directly. Site editor privileges are limited and do not permit instant publishing.

Writing

University of New England publications follow the Associated Press (AP) style of writing, with the exception of scholarship written for purely academic audiences. The UNE Style Guide (PDF) contains a selection of words, terms, and usage issues that commonly arise when writing about a university. It provides short explanations of proper AP style for each, as well as information about other stylistic practices UNE has adopted.

All UNE faculty and professional staff members should have an online profile on dbctl.com. Profiles contain your name, title, contact information, bio, a portrait, and more, helping both internal and external audiences understand who you are and what you do.

Though the Office of Communications manages the overall dbctl.com website, faculty/professional staff profiles are owned by individual faculty/professional staff members. This enables you to manage your own entry so that it is as up-to-date as possible. Having ownership over your own profile also allows you to update your entry as frequently as you would like.

Managing Profile Edits

To edit your existing profile, click on the dbctl.com tile on your Okta log in screen, then follow the instructions outlined in our How to Edit Your Employee Web Profile guide.

New Employees

If you are a new faculty/professional staff member and need a profile to be created for you, you can log in to dbctl.com in two ways:

• From your Okta log in screen, click on the dbctl.com tile. This will bring you to your dbctl.com account log in screen.
  • Click on the My Profile link. That will bring you to a page with this text: If this is your first time logging in to dbctl.com after the website migration in June 2020, or if this is your first time logging in ever, you will need to fill out this form to let the Office of Communications web team know what type(s) of access you need to create or edit content on the website, including your personal profile. 
  • Click on the link and fill out the form, selecting the “New Profile (select this if you do not have a profile and need one created + access)” option under “Please tell us what types of content you need access to create and edit”.
  • Our team will complete the request, reaching out with any questions if necessary. Once your request is complete, you will get a confirmation email that will contain the instructions on how to edit and maintain your profile. The written instructions, as well as an FAQ on managing your online profile, can be found at b2s.dbctl.com/communications.
• Go to dbctl.com/edit, if you are already logged in to Okta, you will already be logged in to the website and can follow the steps above. If you are not already logged in to Okta, you will see a button that says “Log in with Okta.” Click on that and log in to Okta. Once you are logged in you will be brought to your dbctl.com account log in screen. From there, follow the steps above.

Profile Editor Access

It is possible to allow your profile to be managed by another person in your department, some departments have designated their departmental office manager as the owner of all faculty profiles within that department. This approach helps to maintain consistency across departments.

If you’d like another person to manage your profile, email Joel Soloway. Profiles may have only one designated editor — if you request that another person manage your profile, you will lose access.

Profile Portraits

Faculty and professional staff are encouraged to contact the university photographer to schedule a professional headshot for inclusion in your online profile. Please use the photo request form.

In the event that you are not able to schedule a new headshot to be taken, you may submit your own.

Guidelines* for profile photos are as follows:

• Photo should be taken from the shoulders up with a plain, clean background. Loosely frame head and shoulders to below rib cage, leaving room on all four sides.
• Photo should be taken in a well-lit space, with the light in front or to the side, not backlit.
• Photo should be in full color, not black and white.
• Photo should be professional; no creative filters and no sunglasses.
• Photo should be of you alone; you should not be able to see anyone else.
• Photo should be at least 375x375px. Choose a vertical or horizontal format for the photo. (Horizontal has more flexibility.)
• Please email the original, highest resolution photo. Photo cannot be blurry or pixelated.

*The Office of Communications reserves the right to refuse a photo if the above guidelines are not followed.

Portrait Sessions

The Office of Communications offers two portrait sessions per semester on each campus (for a total of four) to photograph professional staff and faculty who need a new or updated portrait for their UNE employee profile.

Click on the date you want to attend to select a time slot.

All UNE employees may create events for the website. No training is required.

All events appear on the website's main events calendar and event topics are used to display events on additional webpages throughout dbctl.com.

Events created to display on the UNE website should be UNE-hosted events only. Do not create an event because it may be of interest to the UNE community.

Creating Events

• Click on the dbctl.com tile on your Okta log in screen
• Click on the blue Add Event button
• Use the How to Create and Edit Events instructions to complete your event

If you do not have access to create events, you will not see the button and will need to fill out the Content Access Request form to request access to create events. (This form is different from the website request form.)

Editing Events

• Click on the dbctl.com tile on your Okta log in screen
• Click on My Events
• Click on Edit next to the event you want to update
• Use the How to Create and Edit Events instructions to edit your event

You are only able to access/edit events that you created. If you need a change to an event that someone else created, you can request help by filling out the Website Request form.