Overview

The SOU IT website team designs develop and maintains optimized, appealing, and mobile-friendly websites and web applications for the campus community. The SOU IT Web team can develop new websites, or help with updates to existing sou.edu websites.

New Website Proposals and Process

• Discovery: We meet to learn more about your project and to discuss your purpose, goals, and target audience.

• Content: We help you create a content strategy to ensure your site is useful and engaging for your audience.

• Design: We work with you to guide the creative process that will shape the design of your site.

• Function: We ensure that the site setup, back-end, and front-end development work flawlessly before launch.

• Deploy: We assist with quality assurance before your site is launched.

Website development proposals can be submitted to web-support@sou.edu for consideration. Once a proposal is received, our team will reach out to begin the discovery process.

Website Content Updates

For help updating content on an existing sou.edu website, submit requests to web-support@sou.edu .

Website content update request must have the following information:

1.  A link to the page(s)  needing to be modified.

2. A clear description of which section of a page needs modification.

3. The words/images needed to complete the request.

If any of the above information is not provided within the request, the request may be delayed and/or rejected.

Please Note:
*Each SOU department/program should identify a single individual to work directly with the IT website team to coordinate website development and update requests.
*All content needed for a web update (ex: image files and copywriting) must be provided at the time of submission. Requests submitted without all content needed for an update will be rejected and flagged for re-submission, which will delay development turnaround time accordingly.

• For basic copywriting text updates please allow up to 10 business days for your request to be resolved.

• For updates that include an image or video updates please allow up to 15 business days to be resolved.

• For website updates requiring features such as additional pages or third-party application integrations, a resolution may take up to 20 business days.

• Advanced feature requests may require a discovery process meeting and discussion.

Images for Web Updates

The following is a list of standard requirements for website image update requests:

• Images cannot contain text or writing. In the case of a visually impaired website visitor who uses a screen reader to access the SOU website: Screen readers read-only text; they cannot describe pictures or other images, even if the images are pictures of text.

• Original, high-resolution image files are required. Images that have been taken out of focus, taken with a low-quality camera, compressed, copied, screen captured or recycled in any way which causes the image quality to be fuzzy, blurry, or substandard will not be able to be considered.

• Images that will be used for the "Hero" area of a webpage (the topmost image on main landing pages which stretch from left to right edge) have special subject matter arrangement restrictions. The image and subject matter need to have the ability to be cropped to an extreme pano landscape aspect ratio (16:9 or 21:9). Once cropped to extreme pano landscape, all of the main subject matter must be in the same third of the image horizontally (either top third, middle third, or bottom third). Images with the subject matter in differing horizontal thirds of the image will result in some of the subject matter being "cut-off" on some devices (mobile, tablet). Hero images typically have heading and text superimposed on the left half of the image, and in other cases text is in the middle, so depending on the layout of the hero area text, the main subject matter will need to flow around the text properly based on different device sizes. The hero area images are extremely sensitive to mobile responsive design, therefore it usually requires collaboration with the website development team. If any of the above criteria are not met, the image can not be used.

• Images must be able to be either cropped to Landscape (16:9) or Square (1:1) aspect ratio depending on the use case.

• Hero images for consideration need to be cropped to at least 1920px wide. All other images need to be able to be cropped to at least 1200px wide.

• Headshot images must be high-resolution, professional, clear, forward-facing and able to be cropped to the shape of a circle.

• Images cannot be generated by Artificial Intelligence.

3rd Party Widgets and Plugins

All third-party widget and plugin requests are taken into consideration by the SOU Web Governance committee and can take up to 20 business days to be considered. The reasoning for the widget/plugin use-case should be provided along with the request. During the vetting process, security and network health factors will be taken into consideration.