9. Unlinked Website Content

The Trinity website is our main communications and marketing platform for the dissemination of information and promotion of the University to a worldwide audience.  Our website is also used as a source of information on Trinity activities by the internal community, external groups and individuals.  In order to provide the best possible service and user experience, this policy outlines that, all content published to www.tcd.ie should be accessible and connected to the rest of the Trinity website, as defined in 9.1 below.

9.1 As a public informational site, all content published to www.tcd.ie should be accessible and therefore should be linked to the rest of the Trinity website (www.tcd.ie) as follows:

• Navigation link - a named page on a navigational menu
• Content link – links within the body of website content
• Asset link – any given webpage is typically comprised of several individual linked files contributing content by text, images, video, audio etc.

9.2 Unlinked content consists of webpages and/or files which are not linked to, or discoverable from, the rest of the Trinity website.  These do not appear in navigational menus of a website or contribute to the content or assets of a website.  

Common reasons for content to be unlinked include:

• Changes to a website that render a webpage or website assets obsolete.  In this circumstance the old content should be removed.  However, if this does not happen these webpages become orphaned , in that they are effectively abandoned.
• Creation of private content, where these webpages were never intended to be publicly accessible and are not linked to.  They are only accessible to individuals who know the exact URL of the unlinked content.
  

9.3 Procedures for removal of unlinked content on www.tcd.ie

9.3.1    Upon discovery of unlinked content IT Services will contact the site administrator and/or content owner(s) to notify them of the content in question.
9.3.2    A timeframe not exceeding one month will allowed for an examination of the content and an opportunity to link it, if it was unlinked in error.  It should be noted that longer timelines may be needed on a case by case basis to deal with historical content.
9.3.3    Unlinked content will need to be removed or relocated to a more appropriate service for example, VLE, OneDrive, fileshares etc.
9.3.4    A reminder email will be issued one week before the deadline (see 9.3.2) advising again of the issue with the unlinked content.  If the unlinked content is still in place at the end of that week, IT Services will proceed as follows:

• Change the permissions on the content so that it is no longer available to view in a browser.  The site administrator and/or content owner(s) will still have permissions to copy or delete it.
• Notify the site administrator and/or content owner(s) their content is no longer accessible and will be deleted in two weeks.
• IT Services will remove the content at the end of the period.
• Any content removed as part of this process that is subsequently re-published as unlinked content will be subject to immediate deletion upon discovery without notification.

9.4 Related web policies

• Web Server Usage - on the usage of www.tcd.ie for publishing public information which states the information published here is intended to be public.
• Policy Statement - on the stated aim of the College website “to provide accurate, useful and timely information” which requires quality control on the removal of obsolete and out of date content.