Have your material published on West Midlands Regional Website

Introduction

The regional website (http://www.westmids.unison.org.uk) is run under the auspices of the Regional Recruitment and Campaigning Committee. It seeks to support UNISON’s regional and national objectives by: 

• Supporting members at work by providing them with contact information
• Supporting campaigns which the region is running or is affiliated to
• Encouraging recruitment of new members
• Supporting internal democratic structures by making information relating to committees available to view
• Providing a mechanism for efficiently distributing information to branches and members

Day to day work on the site is undertaken by a small group of staff who can post material on to the site at the request of staff, regional activists or branches.

Format 

In order that the website retains some consistency for users, and develops a sense of continuity, a common style is applied to most pages on the site. This includes the use of a common set of colours and typefaces, together with a consistent set of navigation buttons so that the user can quickly and easily learn to find their way around the site. As far as possible, new pages should fit in with this common identity.

For this reason, the best way to supply information to go onto the website is in a Word document, from which the text can be copied and pasted into the appropriate template. When you do this, bear in mind that visitors to the site will not want to scroll down through screen after screen of information. Break your documents down into small chunks of 200 words or so, and prepare a separate contents page so that users can jump straight to the part of the document they want to read. Don’t worry about creating the links between the documents, just supply instructions about how you want the pages to be linked together and the rest will be done for you.

Remember that visitors to the site may be using a slow modem link. Don’t add graphics gratuitously, and if you want to use a photograph (or other sorts of large file) put it behind a link which warns the visitor of the size of the download.

If you are going to design a large group of pages, you can design them in your own format and create the HTML pages yourself. Effectively you will be creating your own ‘subweb’ within the regional website. In this case you should apply your own format to the pages, create the hyperlinks yourself, and pass the documents over in HTML format so that they can be placed directly onto the site.

Currently most branches have a minimal entry on the site with simply the branch secretary and phone number listed. If you want to see more information there, please supply it in either Word or HTML format, and feel free to apply your own individuality to these page(s). Please accompany any update to branch pages with written authorisation for the update from your branch secretary.

Similarly, if committees or sub-committees wish to see documents placed on the website relating to the work of the committee, these should be supplied with written approval from the chair of the committee concerned.

Whether you want to pass the information over in word or HTML format, the documents must be sent electronically. Send them on a 3½“ disk or CD-ROM to Keith Heron at the regional centre, or email k.heron@unison.co.uk.

For more information please contact Mike Topping - telephone no. 0121 685 3107, email m.topping@unison.co.uk)