Web Policies and Guidelines

Overview

TMCC’s official web presence is located at www.tmcc.edu. The College’s web resources include all web pages that are sponsored and maintained by College divisions, departments, units and programs, including, but not limited to:

• TMCC homepage
• Key landing pages
• Official division, department, unit or program pages
• College-sanctioned organizations and committees
• Instructional (faculty) web pages
• Officially-recognized student organizations

This includes all content, digital assets and other intellectual properties contained on www.tmcc.edu, and external online entities (social media, third party and cloud-based hosted applications and sites) published in the name of the College or any of its divisions, departments. Although these areas and organizations may maintain their own web content, they are responsible for adhering to TMCC's web policies and standards, and other applicable College policies as well as local, state, and federal laws.

Officially designated/authorized web content contributors are responsible for the information placed on their departmental/program web pages.

Appropriate Use and Content

TMCC provides access to web resources and content for the conduct of College business. Since the web is a communications channel and not every web page is regularly monitored by Web Services, it is the responsibility of the officially designated/authorized departmental web content contributors via the hosting department to ensure that the information they publish is current, accurate and conforms with the College mission, rules, policies and procedures.

In addition, the information must be directly related to that unit's College function and be consistent with the mission and goals of Truckee Meadows Community College. Materials placed on the College website represent TMCC, not individual staff or students.

In order to prevent inconsistency and the unnecessary duplication of information, web content contributors are required to link or reference existing content where applicable to ensure that original sources of information are utilized, rather than recreating it on their web pages.

Web Content Contributors

Each department/program/unit will designate a single individual to be the liaison to Web Services, and who is primarily responsible for the content of their web pages. The liaison generally referred to as web content contributor (or web content provider), must be a full-time, current member of the TMCC faculty or staff. At the discretion of Web Services, and where there is demonstrated need, departments may assign a second web content contributor as a backup.

Web content contributors must check their department web pages regularly to make sure information is up-to-date, correct and all links are operational.

Each web content contributor will be provided with training opportunities through Web Services.

Policy Violations and Oversight

If in violation of policies, TMCC reserves the right to remove material posted on its web pages. The College also reserves the authority to restrict web access.

The College has appointed a broad-based committee comprised of faculty, administration and staff that is chaired by TMCC’s Webmaster. The Web Advisory Committee shall serve to consider complaints, disputes, strategies and other matters regarding web policy procedures and violations in conjunction with Web Services.

Ultimate responsibility, authority and oversight of the TMCC website and its resources resides with TMCC's Webmaster.

Web Standards

TMCC's public web presence is an important vehicle for educating and recruiting students, faculty, and staff, communicating the College’s vibrant academic environment, building community, doing business, and informing the external target audiences about the life of the College. As such, it is essential that the public TMCC website conveys a cohesive visual identity, provides accurate information, is presented in a professional manner, and encourages diversity of content for academic departments, individual faculty, and various other stakeholder communities.

The organization and functionality of the TMCC website is built upon tightly integrated navigation structures, specific design and style guide elements that offers ease of movement from one page to another that promotes site-wide consistency, and functionality across various and broad platforms, browsers and devices to reach the widest possible audience.

To maintain consistency and quality throughout the TMCC website, all content, files and digital assets will adhere to the official TMCC style guide, using established standards and best practices, and will be reviewed prior to posting online. Photographs must be of high quality, good composition, appropriate lighting, using flattering images of students and meeting all FERPA regulations for student privacy. All official faculty and staff photographs will be taken by the Marketing and Communications Office photographer. All official videos will be created and/or approved by TMCC's videographer before being posted on TMCC's website and YouTube channel.

Digital Content Management and Design Consistency

TMCC supports and maintains a centralized enterprise web content management system (CMS) to ensure security, consistency, reliability and availability of all pages hosted at www.tmcc.edu. All web pages must conform to CMS standards. All College departments are required to utilize the CMS for all online activities, unless Web Services determines that a lack of functionality exists or other extenuating circumstances require that alternate solutions are necessary to address a specific business operating need.

All websites must use official College web page templates and specific style guidelines using the CMS as the central editor and deployment tool.

See Also: Learn more about TMCC's website and CMS

Online PDF Files

In addition to HTML pages, departments may opt to publish PDF files to the TMCC website. Web Services will assist departments in determining the best format, as it should be known that PDF is typically not as user-friendly or as mobile-friendly as HTML.  

Should HTML not be an option, all TMCC Portable Document Format (PDF) files that are posted on the TMCC website will adhere to TMCC's online standards for quality, branding and accessibility and be kept current by the designated department or web content provider. More information about PDF publishing can be found under our Frequently Asked Questions.

Standards and Guidelines for Accessibility

Truckee Meadows Community College is committed to providing an accessible Web presence. TMCC's website has been designed to adhere to an internationally recognized set of standards and guidelines provided by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), including:

• W3C's Accessibility Principles
• Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)

WCAG covers a wide range of recommendations for making Web content more accessible. Following these guidelines makes content accessible to a wide range of people with disabilities, including blindness and low vision, deafness and hearing loss, learning disabilities, cognitive limitations, limited movement, speech disabilities, photosensitivity and combinations of these. Following these guidelines also often makes web content more usable in general.

To stay informed and up-to-date/current, TMCC Web Services participates in/subscribes to the WAI Interest Group. The WAI Interest Group provides a forum for:

• Reviewing deliverables being developed by WAI Working Groups
• Exploring web accessibility issues and solutions
• Sharing information about web accessibility activities around the world

External Web Publishing, Social Media, Mobile Applications

With the proliferation of software-as-a-service and cloud-based web tools, mobile applications and social media outlets, the delineation of web activity hosted on the College’s official web presence (www.tmcc.edu) and/or an externally hosted Web sites is not always self-evident. For the purposes of College policy, all content, digital assets and/or other forms of digital external publication presented on behalf of the College and/or any of its programs or units is subject to this, the College’s Web and other policies.

All social media and/or third party community building  accounts established by College departments require prior registration and/or creation by TMCC’s Marketing and Communications Office in collaboration with TMCC’s Web Services Office. Although external web tools may vary in utility, style, audience and/or presentation, authors are held to the same standards of consistency, accuracy, appropriateness and visual identity considerations as they would if the content was published on www.tmcc.edu.

TMCC does not allow the material/content from existing TMCC department sites (including but not limited to textual, graphical and photographic content) to be copied and duplicated in verbatim for use on third-party social media websites.

All official TMCC department and student organization websites are hosted at www.tmcc.edu and are created using specific templates and style guides. For more information, view our Social Media FAQ, Social Media Procedures and Social Media Content Guidelines.

As new social media opportunities emerge and/or evolve, departments are required to consult and/or coordinate with TMCC’s Marketing and Communications Office prior to establishing a College presence. TMCC may pursue, limit and/or delay consideration for a new media presence until a strategic decision is considered and approved.

TMCC currently does not support or provide hosting for blogs at this time. If you are interested in blogging, there are several non-College, third-party venues for this service.  Please contact Web Services for more information.

External Links

Links to external commercial and non-commercial sites must be appropriate to the mission and purpose of the College and department. External links from TMCC pages can link to a commercial site only if the site is being used as an educational resource rather than a way to compete with local businesses or as a source of college or personal revenue.

Links to commercial sites cannot interfere with existing TMCC contracts.

The web content contributor should assess links at regular intervals to check for dead links, missing pages, and links to unacceptable material.

All external links are subject to review and approval by Web Services.

Advertising

Except as otherwise expressly noted, advertising by external agencies is not permitted on TMCC web pages. College web pages are not to be used to promote or execute commercial or for-profit endeavors. In addition, using College web resources for personal financial gain is not permitted.

It is, however, acceptable for TMCC web pages to market, advertise, link to and promote College services and products. It is also acceptable and appropriate for a department to acknowledge external sponsorships by properly publishing text and/or trademarks of the sponsoring organization. However, the text and/or trademark of the sponsoring organization must be directly related to a collaboration, project, or service provided by the College. The posting of a trademark or other logo that promotes an unrelated product or service is not permitted.

Website Privacy Statement

See the College’s current website privacy statement.