omniupdate user's guide at mtsac

Using OmniUpdate to Maintain Your Web Site

With the adoption of OmniUpdate as Mt. San Antonio College Web content management system, the Technology Resources Group Web Team, IT and the Marketing Department support department and faculty Web sites that provide teaching, learning and support resources to our students and others in the college community.

OmniUpdate allows you to create a Web page using the power of pre-designed templates that create consistency across our Mt. San Antonio College public Web sites.

If you would like to create a course-based, password-protected Web site, please contact  Distance Learning to request this.

Empowerment

OmniUpdate empowers you — the content owner — to create your content directly into your Web pages with full permission to publish your work with the click of a mouse.

The same standards that apply to other materials that instructors produce for students apply at our Web sites. For example, student privacy should be protected, materials should be related to our Mt. San Antonio College teaching assignments, and we must observe copyright laws for both the written word and images.

Writing for the Web

Writing and formatting content for the Web is different than writing for print. Most people come to a Web site looking for information. It is our job to help them scan what we offer on our pages so that they can get to what they need or move on to the page that will.

That's not to say that some visitors won't read a dense paragraph, but it will help most readers if we highlight key words and information using short paragraphs and font styles that help to navigate through our page information.

Tips for readable pages

• Short paragraphs
• Scannable key words
• Images help define content
• Current information is key

Maintaining Your Site

It's important to keep your site up to date with current and useful information. Visitors will be frustrated if they encounter broken links, near-empty pages, outdated information and "under construction" notices. One advantages with OmniUpdate is that you can easily update and edit your pages by logging in and using the Quick Edit feature found on every page of your site.

Accessibility Guidelines

Using the Mt. San Antonio College template in OmniUpdate, you'll build and maintain accessible Web pages for all users. For example, the image insertion process requires that you include an image description. This is so that someone who uses a text reading software program can know what an image is. Also, we've created accessible tables that you can copy and paste into your Web pages so that you don't have to build them yourself! This will make it easier for a "reader" to follow the data content in your table and provide the information as you intended.

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