Websites
If you need a new website or a change to an existing website, you should always contact the Faculty’s Communications and Marketing Team in the first instance.
This guide is designed to route common enquiries to the correct team as quickly as possible.
If you can’t see what you need, please get in touch with the Web Team at bmhweb@manchester.ac.uk.
What do you need to do?
Create a new website or web page
Develop a research website
The Faculty’s Web Team can support the following types of research website for external audiences:
- Official Faculty and funded centres, institutes and research networks
- Funded research projects* with a public audience
- Research conferences (single page site with link for booking hosted elsewhere, e.g. eStore)
We can't create new Division websites. To make updates to an existing Division page in Pure/Research Explorer, see how to make a change to an existing website.
All new research centre/institute/network and project websites needs to be approved by the Faculty Research and Innovation Board.
See: Guidance on the approval process and how to apply.
If approved, you will be referred to the Web Team to begin the website build process. Websites will be built in one of the University’s approved content management systems (Wordpress or T4).
Please note: We cannot support the creation of database driven websites and applications. For these, you will need to contact Research IT Services.
If neither the Web Team or Research IT can meet your requirements, you can engage an external agency to build a website for you, but you should still speak to the Web Team before doing this to ensure any site you commission meets the University’s technical, legal and branding requirements. Any sites that do not meet our requirements may need to be taken down.
Create a page for my research project or group in Pure/Research Explorer
Pure/Research Explorer is the University's main project database and should be used to display basic information for all research projects.
As standard, funded projects will be automatically added to the Pure database but you will need to change the visibility to Public if you want it to display on your public profile.
If you require a project website for a public audience, for example to recruit public/patient participants, the Web Team may be able to build these with approval from the Faculty's Research and Innovation Board (see 'Develop a research website' section above).
Setting up a new project
If you don't already have a funded project entry, the Web Team can set up projects in Pure that will allow you to have a page where you can add people, publications, projects (and any of the other datasets in Pure) that are specific to your project or group.
Once set, any researcher listed in this record can edit it, so you can manage this content yourself.
Example: Digital Health and Social Care Group
Please get in touch with the Web Team at bmhweb@manchester.ac.uk.
Develop a website for another purpose
Please contact the Web Team in the first instance: bmhweb@manchester.ac.uk.
Requests for non-research websites are considered on a case-by-case basis. Any new website will need approval from your Head of Division or School before being submitted to the Web Team, including confirmation of who will be responsible for keeping the site up to date.
In some cases, the Web Team is not able to support the building of a website or may need to refer it to a more appropriate team (e.g. Internal Communications or eLearning).
Develop a website with an external agency
Please contact the Web Team in the first instance: bmhweb@manchester.ac.uk.
The Web Team can advise on how to work with an external agency to build your website and you should speak to them before putting any work out to tender.
Please bear in mind that any University websites developed externally still need to comply with the University’s technical, legal and branding requirements including web accessibility.
If you build a website that does not meet these requirements, the University may not be able to host it.
Make a change to an existing website
Request a change to bmh.manchester.ac.uk or sites.manchester.ac.uk
Please get in touch with the Web Team at bmhweb@manchester.ac.uk.
Request a change to Staffnet
Please get in touch with the Internal Communications Team at bmhcommunications@manchester.ac.uk.
Request a change to a course page
If there's anything on a course page that is factually incorrect and needs to be updated outside of the annual web audit, please email fbmh.courseinfo@manchester.ac.uk.
Request a change in Pure/Research Explorer
The Faculty’s Web Team has access to edit the content of Faculty, School and Division pages in Pure/Research Explorer.
If you would like to request a change, please get in touch with the Web Team at bmhweb@manchester.ac.uk.
For help with making changes to your personal profile or projects, please contact the Pure Team at pure@manchester.ac.uk.
Request a URL/domain name
Request a short/marketing URL
If you don’t want to put the full URL for your website on printed materials, you might need a marketing URL, e.g. manchester.ac.uk/yoursitename.
If this is what you require, please get in touch with the Web Team at bmhweb@manchester.ac.uk.
Note: Subdomains of the manchester.ac.uk URL (such as yoursitename.manchester.ac.uk) are reserved for a limited number of uses and cannot be used as marketing URLs.
Request a manchester.ac.uk URL
You cannot request a URL in advance of creating a website. If you need a website, please refer to the creating a new website section above.
If the Web Team is building a website for you, you will automatically get a manchester.ac.uk URL (either at sites.manchester.ac.uk, blogs.manchester.ac.uk or bmh.manchester.ac.uk).
If you have already developed a website and are requesting a URL to host it at, please be aware that sites MUST meet the following criteria to qualify for a manchester.ac.uk address:
- be built in a University-hosted platform (T4 or Wordpress) and;
- either be built with a University team, either a faculty or central web team or Research IT;
- or be built by an approved agency with oversight from a University web team.
Request a non-manchester.ac.uk URL
If you need your site to sit at a different URL, for example because Manchester is just one partner in a collaboration or a funder has requested the lead branding/their own URL, we can work with IT Services to purchase a domain name and/or set this up.
Examples:
- CONNECT Digital Study (new domain name)
- NIHR Older People and Frailty Policy Research Unit (funder URL)
Note: If you do choose to use a non-manchester.ac.uk URL, you cannot use the University of Manchester logo/branding as the main logo.
If this is what you require, please get in touch with the Web Team at bmhweb@manchester.ac.uk.