Author: Desmond Samuel

Writing well for the web

People tend to read a web page differently than they do on paper. This means that the best approach when writing for the web is different from writing for print. A website works best if people can find what they need quickly, complete their task and leave without having to think about it too much.

Writing for the webThe guidance on writing for Imperial’s website is based on research into how people read online and how people use the website. You can access this guidance as an online web skills module or through one of the monthly training sessions run by the College.

Upcoming sessions

  • Thursday 22 June (10:00-13:00)
  • Tuesday 18 July 2017 (10:00-13:00)

To book a place on a session, email News and Digital Content Editor Andrew Youngson

Central ‘Faculty of Medicine’ webpages – looking a little bit different!

webpageAs you may well have noticed by now, the central ‘Faculty of Medicine’ website has moved into Imperial College’s new website content management system (CMS). These pages (the majority of pages under www.imperial.ac.uk/medicine)  have been migrated and refreshed to match the College’s new look and to deliver a better user experience for visitors to the site – no matter what device they may be using: mobile, tablet or desktop computer. To prepare for this transfer a team of editors in the Faculty have worked hard to review and recreate their existing pages into the new format, and we’d like to thank them for all their hard work.

This is the first phase of a programme of transfer for the many sites which are related to the Faculty of Medicine.  Sites will need to be moved from our current Faculty system (an older, CMS which is unique to our Faculty) into the College’s new, mobile-friendly system.  For more detail about future transfers, please see the ‘what’s next?’ section below.

What to expect from the new pages.

Now the new pages have gone live you’ll notice that existing urls and links to central Faculty information held on these pages have changed.  We’ve worked to keep a number of our most important url links going to their direct equivalent – but with such a large website move, it’s inevitable that some existing links to pages may no longer work as you expected. If the old link you are used to using has changed, you’ll either be redirected to the appropriate general area of the new site, or be taken to a ‘404’ page which will attempt to locate a relevant page in the new site.  Alternatively you can use the College search box which appears at the top of every web page.

We want your feedback.

We are very interested to hear your experiences of using the new site as you get to know it during the first few months after launch.  In particular we’d very much value your opinion of the new ‘For FoM staff’ section (we aim to continually improve this as a resource to complement the College level pages – and need your input to do that!).

What’s next?

The next stage of the project will be to rollout a programme of activity to work with site owners to help them migrate content from their departmental, unit or research group pages into the new system and designs. This activity will take a year to complete, and will be undertaken as a phased roll-out which will be planned with each of the Departments.  If you are a Faculty CMS site owner we will therefore be contacting you over the coming months to discuss your training needs and help you plan the transfer of your pages into the new system.


For more information about the College-wide web project, please visit:
http://www.imperial.ac.uk/staff/tools-and-reference/web-guide/projects/web-redesign/

For information on how to prepare your web pages for the new system please visit: http://www.imperial.ac.uk/staff/tools-and-reference/web-guide/projects/web-redesign/guidance/


Desmond Samuel

Digital Communications and Marketing Strategy Manager
Faculty of Medicine