OMNI CMS Best Practices
OMNI CMS (content management system), the current website platform, has significant differences compared to the previous platform. Although the editing process itself is similar, there are several new features and steps that may vary from before. Please review the information below to help you better understand how the new CMS works.
- Web Standards Guide
- First Steps
- Best Practices
- Linking and Uploading
- Saving and Versioning
- Snippets
- Assets
- Service Now Requests
Content Editing Best Practices
Images and Media
When uploading images or files, please adhere to the naming requirements.
Writing for Web
Webpage text should be direct and concise. Recommended practices can be found on the federal government's plain language site. Read about research on how people read online by the Nielsen Group.
Accessibility
A lot of accessible practices are baked into our implementation of Omni CMS already, but there are a few things that still require editors to be vigilant. Universities are increasingly getting fined for non-ADA compliant websites.
Use headings in proper order. Every page heading is an H1 already, so the first heading on your editable page should be an H2. H3 must follow an H2, and so on. You may jump back up in the order if you're starting a brand new topic, but never add another H1.
Add alt text to images. Omni will not allow you to add an image without putting something in the "alternative description" field of the Insert/Edit Image window. However, you should put something meaningful. A short generic description will do; imagine you're on the phone and describing it to someone who cannot see the image.
Do not upload PDFs. There are exceptions to this but they are rare and usually official documentation. If it has graphics and colors, is a promotional piece, was printed, was designed, or looks cute, don't add it.
Do not upload images with text. Text in images is unreadable to screen readers and sometimes unreadable even to human users on mobile devices.