Web services FAQs

To initiate a web project, submit a web services ticket with your project details. 

Web design, consulting and services are generally offered free of charge to campus clients through the Web services manager.

However, if a campus client requests a particularly labor-intensive or rush job that requires special assistance from an outside vendor, there will be a fee involved.

Prices charged by the external vendor will be passed along to the client and costs vary by vendor.

Any anticipated extra costs will be discussed with, and authorized by, the client prior to project initiation. Estimates for the requested services will be acquired upon request.

Depending on what type of website you would like to develop – and where it is located on Messiah’s website – it may be possible to contract a student or another outside consultant to design your department’s website if you have the budget to do so. However, it is important that before you begin, you contact the University web services manager to consult on the pending project. This will allow for advance discussion related to:

• The anticipated completion date
• The application of the University’s graphic standards to your web page
• Where the completed site will be located on Messiah’s website
• What the site’s web address (URL) will be
• The many resources (both printed and online) available to your designer regarding the University’s graphic and technical compatibility standards
• Access and security issues related to Messiah's web server.

Please Note: Websites that are designed independently of the University’s Web staff are still subject to the University’s approved graphic standards and technical compatibility standards. Discussing these standards with the University Web Services Manager in advance of your project’s design will help avoid significant delays or major revisions. Messiah University's Web team is not responsible for resolving problems resulting from these standards not being adhered to.

The design time required for each website varies depending on the scope of the project and the current workload of Web services, but general timelines range between 2-6 weeks.
 

Design time can be shortened significantly if the client is able to:

• Provide significant input into the organization of the site by completing a site architecture
• Provide the Web page copy in electronic format (via disk or email, for example)
• Provide the photos or images they would like to use
• Work within the established templates and graphic standards approved for Messiah’s website

Web services is not equipped with the resources to offer assistance to Messiah students or employees for personal websites. However, training is available through ITS to learn how to develop personal web pages. Contact ITS for more information.

In general, we recommend resizing your images to 500px wide (at 72ppi) for content widgets and document pages.

For some additional context, because Messiah University's website is responsive, our template will always assign a percent width to your image.

For example if you upload an image to the content section of a document page or homepage, and align it right or left, it will assume a 30% width automatically.

This means that your image might be 500px wide on a large screen or it could only be 200px on a tablet.

Please note, this only applys to images housed within page content and widgets and not to page banners, which have different guidelines that will be address in additional FAQs. 

Quick answers:

Hompage banner/hero images: 1620px × 732px at 72 ppi.

Secondary page banners: 816px x 289px at 72 ppi.

Homepage banners/hero images

All updates to hompage banners and hero images must be requested by web services. 

Request an update to your hompage banner. 

Secondary page banners

Every page on the Messiah University website, by default, will use the “secondary default” page template unless otherwise updated. 

Page banners are not required for pages using the secondary default template. In fact, lower level pages are recommended focus on content and not images. That said, content managers do have the ability to add page banners and may do so using the image size provided above. 

Featured image: 700px x 348px at 72ppi and no larger than 50kb

Article body images: 1200px wide (various heights are fine) at 72ppi

The appropriate image size to use the image hover widget is: 400px x 285px 

The Image Hover Widget can be used to to create a fun, visual link for site visitors.

Here is an example of the Image Hover Widget in action. 

Images must be sized correctly for this widget to work.