Creating and publishing a story

If you are not a content editor and would like to put in a request for your story to appear on the University website, you will need to contact us. At the bottom of the page, we have a template for you to fill in to provide us with all the information we need to put your content live.

The following guidance is aimed primarily at those who edit content on the CMS. It is also useful to read when you are submitting a story for the website as it explains the purpose of this type of content and gives some guidance on how to write it.  

Story content type 

We use the story content type to publish:

• detailed accounts of an aspect of student experience, University research, or staff activity
• personal views, insights, or accounts
• press releases for journalists
• content related to a content marketing strategy
• summaries of student or staff activities 

The story content type isn’t appropriate if:

• you want to publish a University statement or provide information about a University service (use the announcement content type instead)

To maximise the usefulness of story content in a user's journey we have three story types:

• Press release
• News
• Feature

Press release

Press releases are written communications prepared by the Corporate Communications team to share newsworthy information about the University’s activities. They are designed for use by press and media on their own channels.

News

News is content that provides a summarised report of staff and student activities. For example, an academic has won a prize, or you are promoting an upcoming conference.

Feature

A feature is a longer form story written to engage a specific audience around a subject of reader interest. 

Features should be longer than 400 words and are intended to have value and engagement over time. A feature could be an article that is published as part of a content marketing strategy. For example: Lecture, seminar, tutorial: What's the difference?

You should think carefully about what you are trying to achieve when you plan and create feature content. You need to consider:

• Audience: Who are you creating the content for?
• Relevance: Is the subject genuinely interesting to that audience? Focus on topics that they are actively looking for
• Storytelling: Does the content include elements of an engaging story? For example:
  • a central focus on a person or group of people
  • an exploration of a challenge or problem that was faced
  • conclusion
• SEO value
• Call to action: What do you want someone to do after reading your content? Linking the content to specific actions, such as visiting a course page, can provide measurable performance insights.
• Visual engagement: Both press releases and features have the potential to be visually engaging with the option to add elements such as videos, images, galleries, call-outs for quotes, and call-to-action buttons.

Writing a story title

Story titles should:

• be informative and give the reader a sense of what the content is about
• make sense out of context, so that you can understand them when they are presented in search engine results

Story titles should not:

• include the word 'story'
• include the author's name

Writing a story summary

A story summary should tell the reader what the story is about and identify individuals or groups in the content. Ideally the summary should be one sentence in length, and should not exceed 160 characters, including spaces.

Example

Title: Dundee scientist gets cancer research back on track

Summary: Dr Laureano de la Vega is getting on his bike for Cancer Research UK and is urging others to do the same to help get vital research back on track after the impact of the pandemic

Writing the story description

• Don't repeat the summary
• Use clear, straightforward language
• Avoid walls of text and break the content up with headings to make it easier to scan
• Avoid long sentences
• Use bullet points
• Break up content with images
• Follow the guidelines outlined in the University content style guide 

Adding images

Every image that you want to add to a story must relate to the content. We have several places for images on the page:

Hero image

The hero image displays in the background of the header area. It should be landscape (16:9 ratio), for example 1920x1080 pixels. 

Feature image

The feature image displays in the content area before the rest of the content. It should be landscape (16:9 ratio), for example 1920x1080 pixels. This is the image that will be displayed when stories are listed in a feed, or if it is shared on social media. 

Images within the content

Ideally, we recommend including no more than two full-size images within the main body of text. Adding more images can significantly increase page load times, which may negatively impact user experience. Additionally, reducing the number of images supports the University's commitment to sustainability and its net zero goals by minimising data usage and the associated environmental impact.

Gallery images

If your story has a large amount of visual content, you can have several thumbnail images showing in a gallery. A gallery allows users to click on smaller images to view them at full size, and each image can include a caption to provide context or additional information. 

Alt text 

For every image used in the story, you need to provide alt text so that individuals with visual impairments using screen readers can understand the content of the images. This is a legal requirement to ensure accessibility.

Learn more about writing alt text

Permissions

If you are using either images of people or quotes in your story, you need to make sure that you have the relevant permissions to use these online. 

Please contact Marketing for a permissions form if required.

Guidance on adding stories to the content management system (CMS)

Taxonomies for story content

We use taxonomies in content types to organise content, publish it to different locations, and give it meaning so people can find it easily. Taxonomies take the form of assignable categories or tags.  

Below are the story taxonomies that an editor should use.

Featured group

‘Featured groups’ allows the editor to associate content with different parts of the University’s organisational structure. This association takes the form of a parent and child relationship. School and Directorates represent the parents and the departments and services that come under these represent children.

If an editor associates a story with a group then a summary will be published on the group’s website. For example, selecting both the ‘School of Science and Engineering’ and ‘Physics’ would publish content on both of these sites. Children cannot be selected without first selecting the associated parent.

Editors should avoid duplicating story content. For example, if there is a press release or feature that has already been published on the University stories page and you want this to display on a School or department website, it's not necessary to replicate this content in a new story. In this situation you would simply update the 'featured groups' tag on the original item (contact one of the Corporate Communications team to do this if the item is a press release). This maintains our guiding principle of having a single source for each item of content.

Story category

The story category taxonomy assigns one or more broad categories to the content so that it can be displayed on other areas of the website such as landing pages.

Story categories exist to help users browse content on a similar theme. To avoid our category list becoming unnecessarily long and difficult to use, it is recommended that a new category is only created when there is a sufficient amount of published content to justify its existence. For example, a category would not normally be created if there are less than 10 stories relating to it.  

People

Stories can also be associated with one or more people. When this relationship is made between a story and a person it creates a link to the story on the staff member’s profile page. For example, if the story is about a research project, an editor could tag the relevant academic. 

You should only tag people who are referenced in the story.

Submitting story content

If you are submitting stories, please complete the template below.