Blogger responsibilities

Every blog must have a named owner, who’ll be accountable for the blog and be the main point of contact with the Digital team.

The blog owner is expected to:

• ensure the blog is updated at least monthly
• co-ordinate, schedule and quality-assure posts
• help contributors publish their work
• make sure comments are moderated and responded to
• evaluate blog and post traffic and engagement to make sure that it is developing and is worthwhile
• promote the blog and get it out to relevant users in the University and beyond
• make sure their posts disclose all the relevant affiliations when posting about research or writing an opinon as an expert (point 7.3 in the Code of good practice in research integrity)

Every contributor shares a responsibility for the blog and is expected to fully support and deputise for the blog owner.

Digital team responsibilities

The Digital team will support the blog platform and each of the bloggers in the following ways:

• set up new blogs and accounts
• provide guidance on publishing posts and administration of blogs
• maintain the availability and security of the blogging platform
• manage, prioritise and implement requests for additional functionality and design
• produce and maintain guidance and policies related to usage of the blogs
• advise on good blogging practice
• support the promotion of blogs and posts
• archive finished or inactive blogs
• take action to resolve improper use of University blogs

Unsuitable content for our blogs

University blogs should not be used to publish the following:

• announcements, ‘news’ and press releases
• campaign landing pages
• case studies
• corporate information (e.g. policies, strategies etc)
• event listings
• guides
• location overviews
• project overviews
• publications
• service overviews
• staff profiles
• team profiles

The University website should be the primary source for this content. Templates are available for each of these content types in our publishing platform, Typecase (Content Publisher).

Blog posts can be used to supplement content published on the main site. For example, a blog post could be used to help promote an event and link through to the event listing on the main site, or a series of posts could explain how a service is being improved thus helping to market a service available through bath.ac.uk.

Where we identify a misuse of blogs we will contact the owner and outline how the issue should be resolved. Failure to comply will result in a suspension or closure of an account.

Changes to blog design and functionality

The Digital team is responsible for the design and technical configuration of the blogs platform and each blog on that platform.

You should not attempt to make functionality and design changes to the configuration provided by Digital, without first agreeing with Digital. The agreed changes will then be made by Digital, unless expressly agreed that another party or the blogger can make the change on Digital’s behalf.

If you contravene these requirements, the Digital team will ask the blogger to remove the content or reset the configuration changes. The Digital team may make the corrections directly in some cases, for example when the blogger does not respond to the instruction. Of course, exceptions can be made but these must first be discussed and agreed with Digital.

We have set the blogs up in the way we have to make sure that they look good, function well and can be supported (at scale) by a central team. We are always open to ideas for improvements from bloggers and readers of the blogs.

If you have a request for a change to design or functionality please submit a request via the Request or change a feature page and include evidence of how this will meet a user need.