Main Navigation:

• UT System Templates »
• Overview
• How to (and download)
• Support
• Intro to CSS

UT System Web Templates

This site provides information about the new approved look for system web pages of the University of Tennessee It is intended to be used by offices and units of the University of Tennessee administrative system (sometimes called UWA) only. Academic departments, offices, and units associated with UT campuses should use the designs provided by those individual campuses.

• UT Knoxville templates

So when's the deadline for implementing the new design?

There is no fixed deadline. Yet. Rather, we're asking that web developers transition their sites into the new template within three months of the implementation of The University of Tennessee's new content management system, Serena Collage.

Did you say "content management system"?

Yes. Yes, I did.

Once implemented, the content management system will allow people from across the system to gain password-protected access to particular pages, enabling users to edit content without impacting the design. In other words, people who don't know much about CSS, HTML, or FTP'ing will finally be able to make text corrections and create basic pages for unit, college, and departmental websites.

While we hope that the transition to Collage will go smoothly — and while we plan to do everything in our power to make that happen — no venture this large ever goes perfectly.

We're making the templates available now because there has been considerable demand for them. However, please be aware that some of the work you do now will likely have to be repeated if/when you transition to Collage. Until we're able to play with the CMS ourselves, we won't know exactly how much reworking will be required.

Long story short: Feel free to begin using the templates today, but if you intend to transition to Collage later, you might consider waiting.

What about the portal? We maintain our pages in the portal. How will Serena and the portal get along?

It is our goal to convince those who are currently using the portal to maintain their web sites to switch to Serna Collage. While the portal can be used to maintain web sites, it really wasn't designed to do so. It has other very powerful uses. Serena Collage offers users several advantages over the portal for maintaining web sites. For example, you know those long, impossible to remember url's that are generated by the portal for all of your pages? With Serena you won't have that. Serena also offers ease of use that the portal cannot.

I don't want to wait. How do I convert my portal web site to the new template look?

In short, you can't. Because of how the portal generates web pages, the folks in web services (who work with the portal) must "translate" these HTML templates into something that the portal can understand. They are currently at work on this process. Once they have the new look ready in the portal, we will communicate this fact over the UTwebforum listserv. At a designated time, web services will "throw a switch" in the portal and sites will "auto-magically" have the new template header and footer applied to them. However, you can expect to need to tweak your content on your page to make it look more like the new templates.

Next: An overview of the templates »