What type of website are you creating?

Compliance with the general guidelines is required regardless of the type of site you are developing. Choose what type of site you are creating below to see what other guidelines may be required.

Institutional Personal Student Organization Community

This is a departmental site or any site linked off the VCU homepage.

View Institutional Site Guidelines

This is a personal site on www.people.vcu.edu or ramsites.net.

View Personal Site Guidelines

This is a student organization site on www.studentorg.vcu.edu.

View Student Organization Site Guidelines

This is a community organization hosting their website at VCU.

View Community Site Guidelines

General regulations

The following standards apply to all Web pages on all VCU Web servers and other domains that include VCU branding into their site:

  1. All pages must be in compliance with the appropriate VCU policies and applicable local, state, and federal laws, including copyright.
  2. Links that lead directly to materials with sexually explicit content must have warnings stating that fact.
    • "Sexually explicit content" means (i) any description of or (ii) any picture, photograph, drawing, motion picture film, digital image or similar visual representation depicting sexual bestiality; a lewd exhibition of nudity, as nudity is defined in Section 18.2-390 of the Code of Virginia; sexual excitement; sexual conduct or sadomasochistic abuse, as also defined in Section 18.2-390; coprophilia; urophilia; or fetishism.
    • VCU pages containing materials with sexually explicit content must be placed in directories that are restricted for access by a password mechanism.
    • Such materials may be placed on VCU systems only with written approval by the Office of the President.
    • The organization owning those pages will be responsible for the security, control and distribution of those passwords and ensuring that distribution of such materials conforms to applicable laws.
  3. Pages located on university servers may not be used to promote commercial activity, personal business, nonprofit organizations and/or religious groups (however, see the section of this Web site on community Web pages) or to promote personal financial gain, except as may be permitted by other university policy or regulation. Sites on the university Web servers may be revenue-producing as long as they are conducting university business.
  4. VCU pages should not contain confidential university information or student information covered by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act unless adequate security measures are in place to restrict access to authorized persons.
  5. Before incorporating elements (art, photos, etc.) from existing Web sites into your own design, please contact that site's webmaster to obtain permission, unless otherwise stated on the original site.
  6. All pages must be in compliance with VCU's Web Privacy Statement.

Hosting

  1. All institutional web sites must be hosted at VCU.
  2. Technology Services provides hosting platforms for HTML, ASP, ASP.Net and soon PHP web sites.
  3. Departments are strongly encouraged to use Technology Services web servers to host their web sites; departments that choose to host their web site on their own web server may host only their own website, and may not host web sites for other departments.
  4. If a department hosts their web site on their own server, then they must adhere to all of VCU's regulations for supporting a Public Facing Web Server.