About the UNI Home Page

Home PageThe UNI home page and main website is maintained by the office of University Relations. The home page must serve several audiences, including current students, prospective students, faculty and staff, alumni and others interested in the university.

The goal of the home page is to:

  1. Promote student recruitment through appropriate links and telling the stories of the university;
  2. Enhance the reputation of the university and highlight content that advances the university’s strategic priorities;
  3. Provide information on news and events occuring on campus;
  4. Enable users to quickly find information relevant to their needs.

To properly serve those audiences, we seek to balance the amount of content and links on the home page. We try to strike a balance between white space and those items that people want on the page and that need to be there (which are not always the same thing). Any proposed new links are evaluated very carefully, using a variety of benchmarks, metrics and other factors, before being added. 

There are a number of ways campus members can contribute to the home page, including by submitting suggestions for the main profiles (center content), news items (top right), UNI Calendar (center bottom) and the banner ads (bottom right). More information on contributing to each of those areas is below. Your comments and suggestions are always welcome at webteam@uni.edu.

Profiles

The home page profiles link to the UNI e-magazine, This is UNI. Story suggestions are always welcome. The focus is on telling the stories of the people at UNI and their activities. While they are often related to academic endeavors, extracurricular activities and human interest stories also find their way to This is UNI and the home page. The profiles help paint a picture of UNI for prospective students, while honoring the efforts and activities of UNI students, faculty and staff.

News

Many of the news items on the home page come from the public relations area of University Relations. If you have suggestions for a news release or a news item, please submit it to ur@uni.edu.

UNI Calendar

Any event happening on campus should be submitted to the UNI Calendar, so it appears on the calendar website as well as in the calendar feed on the UNI home page. Anyone can submit an event for the UNI calendar via the online submission form. Submissions must be related to UNI and follow the guidelines listed on the submission form.

Banner Ads

On the bottom right side of the home page is a feature called the banner ad where the Office of University Relations posts information about current events and UNI programs in a graphics-based format. You do NOT have to submit artwork for the banner; UR will design the banner. This is a "billboard" concept and not meant to be text-heavy. Events placed there must be able to link to a current and accurate website that is approved by University Relations. The link must go to a website, NOT a pdf. The guidelines for requesting a banner ad are similar to those for calendar submissions. Events on a banner ad must be related to UNI and ideally would be open to the public. Banner ads are scheduled 4-6 weeks in advance, so to have your request considered, submit it early. Submit requests for banner ads to Carolyn Dorr.

UNI In the News

On the bottom left side of the home page is a feature called UNI in the News. This is generated from a service University Relations subscribes to as a way to track news articles about UNI. UR staff choose the items for the home page from among the published news articles listed by the service, which is then fed to the home page. Because the home page news comes from an automatic feed from the service, we can't add articles into that list.

Mobile site

There is a special mobile version of the UNI home page at http://m.uni.edu designed specifically for smart phones and other mobile devices. Development of a universitywide mobile site is underway. See the mobile site for more information.

Accessibility

The University of Northern Iowa endorses the guidelines of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) as the standard for World Wide Web accessibility and compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Every effort is made to make the UNI website accessible according to the ADA guidelines and the Federal Rehabilitation Act (Section 508). For information on how to make UNI websites more accessible visit http://www.uni.edu/webtools/web-accessibility.