If you are interested in requesting the services of our team and your group is affiliated with the School of Medicine, your first step is to provide us with some background information about your site.
Please prepare a list of the following:
A general overview of your site
What's the nature of your department or program?
The target audience
Who is this site for, do you have both an internal and external audience, does the information you are providing to the internal audience need to be secured in some way from the rest of the world?
Goals for your site
What do you want this site to accomplish?
A proposed overall site organization, including what information will go on the home page and how a user would navigate through your site
Any special security or database needs that you may have
Does any of your content need to be PennKey-restricted, do you plan to include any interactive forms or databases? If so, please note that the development of custom web-based databases is often limited to applications with school-wide relevance or benefit.
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Design preferences
This could include a list of sites you like/don't like, a style or color scheme you prefer, any existing brochures, if available, that include your logo or style, etc. We also recommend you take a look at our portfolio.
Images you'd like to include on your site
We do have stock photography and photos of campus available, but we prefer to use imagery that is unique to your department or program, if possible.
The name of a single contact person from your office
A date by which you will have all of your content written
This includes the complete content of every page except perhaps for the most time-sensitive information (e.g., news, announcements, or events) which you can provide closer to your site's "go live" date. Don't forget to include search engine "meta" tags like keywords and site description for the home page.
Your ongoing maintenance preferences
Depending on your needs, we can either continue to maintain the site for you or set up your site with Macromedia Contribute software so you can maintain the content, yourself. (See the complete list of options listed below.)
Once compiled, contact Alethea Peña with this information. A meeting may be scheduled for further discussion, as needed.
Please note that we do not begin the design phase until we have received all of your content.
Once we have received your content, our first step will be to place that content into some design templates we have already prepared. The templates are written using style sheets, so we can make changes to the font type/size, color scheme, and placement of text/imagery fairly quickly to make your site look unique.
Using a template speeds up the entire design process considerably, which is why we like to start with this option. If, however, none of the templates are to your liking and an original design is needed, then we can add your site to our project queue.
After presenting our designs to you and receiving your feedback, we will make the revisions you requested to your chosen design. Once a final design is approved by you, we will begin the process of adding the rest of your content. Once completed, we will ask you to look over the site in detail and make the final approval before going live.
The length of time it takes to go from design to completion varies widely depending on the size and complexity of the site, number of revisions, number of competing jobs, etc. We will give you our best estimate based on the information we have at that time and will keep you abreast of any changes to that schedule should they arise.
Please note: some groups within the School of Medicine receive higher priority, and this may impact the timely completion of your project. These decisions are based on the priorities of the SOM IT Advisory Group and the relevance of the site to the overall mission of the School of Medicine. We will notify you if we need to make any changes to your project's schedule based on this prioritization.
You have two options for the ongoing maintenance of your site:
Please note that, if your site was not designed by our team, or if was designed prior to 2004, then it may need to be redesigned significantly to work with Contribute in a way that we can support.