Why you need to review web content

We all make mistakes, and even the most experienced writers need someone else to check their work.

When someone creates or edits content on the website, it can be difficult for them to see their own mistakes or remember to check the links and formatting on the page. They must ask a colleague to review their changes, even if the changes are small, before anyone publishes the page on the University website.

If a colleague asks you to review some content changes, you need to be able to recognise:

• incorrect information
• spelling, grammar, and punctuation mistakes
• other typos
• broken links
• broken formatting
• unclear language
• accessibility issues

Reviewing preview pages

If a colleague asks you to review some content on the University website, they should send you a preview version of the page.

The preview is a version of the web page that hasn't been published yet, so you can see the changes your colleague made before other people can.

To see the preview page, you need to be connected to our network or signed in to our Virtual Private Network (VPN).

If they've updated an existing page, you can compare the preview version with the live version to help you check their changes. Just replace 'preview' in the URL with 'www' to switch from the preview page to the live page.

What you need to review

Use these checklists to review the preview page. Even if your colleague has only made a small change, you should check each of these things before publishing the page. Links and images can break and language and information can become less clear over time.

Page purpose

1. Read the brief or any instructions for the content to make sure the page meets the requirements.
2. Check that the page is the correct content type.
3. Review the page's user need to make sure all the content meets this need. If the content addresses more than one user need, think about whether to divide it into more than one page.

Information

Review all the factual information on the page to make sure everything is correct and up to date, for example:

• contact details
• dates
• instructions
• names and places

Language

1. Check the page title and summary describe the page and are clear to people who find the page out of the context of your pages.
2. Make sure the language used throughout the page is as simple as possible so that anyone can understand it. Use Hemingwayapp.com to check for clarity, passive voice, and reading grade. Aim for Grade 8.
3. Refer to our Editorial Style Guide to make sure the language is consistent with the rest of the website.
4. Use Grammarly to check spelling, grammar, and punctuation.

Formatting

1. Make sure all the headings use the correct heading styles and hierarchy.
2. Make sure all bullet points, numbered lists and tables look right.
3. Check for italics and bold text. Avoid using either except for the reasons in our Editorial style guide.

Links

1. Test all links, including the Call to action, to make sure they work and go to the correct pages. You can install an extension on your browser to help you check that all the links on a preview page work, for example, Check my links for Google Chrome.
2. Check you can see all email addresses and phone numbers on the page and that they're not hidden behind other text.
3. Make sure the link text meets our guidelines.
   
4. If there's a Local navigation (a light blue strip at the top of the page), make sure there are no broken links there.

Images and media

1. Check all images meet our image requirements, for example, they have descriptive alt text, don't contain text in the image, and are the correct ratio.
2. Make sure all media works correctly and is up to date.
3. Check all videos have subtitles or captions.
4. Check all videos are embedded from Vimeo, not from YouTube. We don't use YouTube because we can't control the suggested videos which appear after ours.

Correcting mistakes

When you've reviewed the preview page, it's best to give written feedback to the person who made the changes detailing what they need to fix before someone can publish the page.

If you're a Typecase user and have access to the page you're reviewing, you can make small corrections yourself. You can access the edit screen of the page in Typecase by replacing 'preview' with 'typecase' in the URL.

If you make bigger changes yourself, make sure you ask someone else for a review before anyone publishes the page.

When the page is ready to be published, send the URL to the assigned publisher in your team.