Maintaining Links to Institutional Information

Here are a few tips to help you maintain links to institutional information. The goal is maintenance-free links. Institutional information or documents refers to any programs of study information, accreditation information, forms, memos, reports, fliers or publications such as the general catalog, schedule of classes, maps, the disaster plan, research data, etc. Links to these documents often need to be published in email messages, the Daily Falcon, web pages, memos, printed and electronic fliers, reports, etc. The steps below will help you avoid broken links to any documents and information posted to the web.

Maintaining links to documents or information posted to the web.

  1. Link to the original web page, information or document rather than duplicating that information on your own department or faculty/staff web page.
  2. Link to pages that link to administrative documents. By linking only to the page where the link resides and not the document file itself, you allow the web author to maintain the link to the document so your link remains maintenance-free.
  3. Use an alias if you wish to link to a PDF file or other document. Please do not link to the document directly. Instead, contact the Web Administrator to create an alias to the document. An alias is a user-friendly, fictitious link address originating from the college's root domain, for example, www.cerritos.edu/schedule-pdf. The real address to the document might look like this, http://www.cerritos.edu/AdmissionsandRecords/_includes/docs/pdf/2018/2018_SpringSched_Web_v.pdf. Since the class schedule file name changes often, a link directly to the document will break. The Web Administrator will maintain the link alias to point to the current file.
  4. Please do not post a copy of an administrative document or page that is posted elsewhere on the web. That also includes sections of administrative documents and pages. There should be only one copy of every administrative document or page posted to the web. All other links should point to the alias for that document or page.
  5. When publishing links to administrative documents in email messages, printed fliers, posters, etc., please follow all of the same practices above whenever possible.