缅北禁地

Before you design and build your 缅北禁地website, you should plan it carefully. Website planning involves setting goals, identifying your audience and stakeholders, preparing and organizing content, and writing up a budget and a timetable for the completion of your project, taking into consideration budgetary and time constraints. On this page, we explain how to create a website plan and we provide downloadable forms you can use to help you define and clarify all aspects of your website project before starting it.

Goals

To plan your website, you need to know what your goals are. The following will help you define your goals:

1. Briefly describe your office, event, campaign;
2. Define the primary purpose of your website;
3. When users visit your website, what are the three things (in order of priority) you want them to know/do?
   (Keeping in mind that the average time a user spends on a website is 2 minutes.)
4. Who are your primary and secondary target audiences (e.g. the general public, delegates, journalists)?

Download the 'Goals template'

Stakeholders

Now you need to define who your stakeholders are. Every website is different, but the typical stakeholders in a website project are the following ones (keep in mind that one person can play multiple roles):

• Project manager;
• Copywriter and editor;
• Web designer (graphic design, illustration, web design);
• HTML coder (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc.);
• Web or CMS developer.

Download the 'Stakeholders template'

Cost

The creation and maintenance of a website requires financial resources, so you need to know how much your website will cost. To help you determine the cost of your project, answer the following questions:

• Is this an update to an existing site, a redesign of an existing site, or the creation of a new site?
• How many pages will the site have?
• How often will it be updated?
• Does your office/campaign/event already have a visual identity or does it need to be developed?
• Do you need a contact form?
• Do you need to integrate multimedia content?
• How much of the content will require translation into the 缅北禁地official languages (See Multilingualism requirements for 缅北禁地websites)?
• Do you need to present information from a database?
• Do you need to collect information from your users and store it in a database?
• Will you be outsourcing site maintenance or will the website be maintained in-house?
  If you maintain your site in-house:
  • What level of technical expertise do you have?
  • Will training be required?
  • Will you need to purchase software licenses?
  • Will you need a content management system?

You can develop and maintain your website in-house, outsource this work to an external company or contact the Web Services Section of the 缅北禁地Department of Global Commiunications (DGC). During the planning phase of your 缅北禁地 website, you can contact DGC/Web Services Section for guidance and cost estimates.

Content

Text, images, video, audio, feeds and documents represent the content of your site. It is important to gather as much of your content as you can before you begin designing and building your site. Your design should make clear where content will be placed and your site should be easy to navigate. As the authoring office, you are responsible for all content posted on your website. You should know what you want to convey on each page and you should consult with your web developer on how to best share your content to help make his/her work more efficient. The web developer may ask you to use certain naming conventions for files, a minimum resolution for images, including captions and credits for photos, and so on. This will speed up the process and make everyone's job easier.

Before posting content, make sure that:

• The accuracy of all text has been checked and approved by the author/author office;
• You have the right to publish the said content on the web;
• You have the right to publish the videos you chose on the web;
• You have the right to publish the photographs you chose on the web;
  (Please note that the use of 缅北禁地photographs is permitted with proper attribution; this includes photographs used in design elements. For non-缅北禁地photos, copyright clearance should be obtained before publication and this clearance should be retained on file for future reference.)
• Your department has cleared all content for publication.

NOTE: Any reference to a 缅北禁地document on your 缅北禁地site must link to the if the document is available in ODS.

Download the 'Content template'

Navigation and site map : How to organize your content

Once you know what content you are going to put on your website, it is time to create a site map (see sample site map below). A typical 缅北禁地website has a Home (introductory) page and a Background (缅北禁地) page. You can add other pages, such as 'Events', 'Resources', 'Documents', 'Contact us', etc. You can also add sub-menus to the main navigation items ('About us', etc.) to give your users access to more content. Six main menu items maximum is strongly recommended. Multimedia products, such as photos, photo galleries, videos and audio can be placed on a dedicated 'Multimedia' page and/or on relevant individual pages.

Accessibility

The 缅北禁地Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities recognizes access to information and communications technologies, including the Web, as a basic human right. Creating websites accessible to users with disabilities benefits all users. Learn more on how to make accessible websites for the United Nations

Copyright

A copyright notice must be included on your site to protect your own material; please respect the copyright of others. See the 缅北禁地 standard copyright page.

Disclaimers

As stated in the Administrative Instruction , if you are linking to an external website outside the 缅北禁地system, including NGOs, or commercial sites, it is mandatory to have disclaimer make it clear that the United Nations does not endorse the website being linked to.

Example of a disclaimer: "References to external web sites must not be seen as an endorsement on the part of the United Nations of external organizations not part of the United Nations system, including non-governmental organizations, or of commercial establishments and products." See the 缅北禁地 standard .

Security

A secure website is not only about preventing hackers from gaining access to your site, but it is also about reducing the risk of improper access and/or loss of information. Any negligence in website security can result in the site being compromised from either the technical or editorial side. Administrators should use caution when employing dynamic pages and forms, and should reduce the dependency on database-driven pages, if applicable. Web Administrators also need to properly test any third-party applications, and monitor FTP and DB access and passwords, especially on machines that have such passwords saved and are open to multiple users.

Regular backups also serve as fail-proof solutions to restore your website quickly while debugging any security issues.

How to use a secure contact form

Email contact forms

A contact form or an email form is a critical part of a website, allowing users to contact you regarding issues they encounter on your site or simply to ask specific questions. Please refer to the following guidelines when considering the use of a form:

• no direct email address to prevent receiving spam emails;
• validate that the user has actually entered a message and a subject;
• validate the format of the email address;
• confirm that the email is sent, or adversely inform the user when an error occurred.

Advanced validation

Use scripts that do not show the email address. The server side scripting should deal with all the data.

RSS – News

Follow these guidelines to mitigate cross-site scripting/SQL injection issues in ASP code:

• Validate user input to reject all invalid input;
• Use parameterized queries for data manipulation statements (SELECT/INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE);
• Access the database using an account with the least privileges necessary;
• Install the database using an account with the least privileges necessary;
• Use stored procedures;
• Re-validate data in stored procedures;
• Ensure that error messages give nothing away about the internal architecture of the application or the database;
• Warn those who are visiting your site of potential fraud.

Hosting

All Secretariat entities using un.org and non-un.org domain names must register the domain names with the United Nations Secretariat, Department of Global Communications (DGC). UN.org domain names are websites using "un.org" as follows in their URL: www.un.org; non-un.org domain names include all domain names that are used by the Secretariat but are independent of .

Requests for registration of new websites are received and processed by the Web Services Section (WSS) of DGC to ensure that all such websites meet multilingualism and accessibility requirements, as well as web standards.

Websites maintained by 缅北禁地Secretariat entities should be hosted under www.un.org or a subdomain of un.org.

Registration of websites on the UN.ORG domain

To request hosting under www.un.org, please to discuss the technical specifications of your project, such as server configuration, etc.

Once your hosting solution is identified, you will be granted posting rights to upload your content on www.un.org through FTP access. You will need to identify an 'Approving Officer' who will be responsible for all content posted on the site. Details and forms will be sent by WSS/DGC.

Registration of websites on non-UN.ORG domain names

WSS/OICT are responsible for maintaining a registration database of non-un.org domain names used by 缅北禁地Secretariat entities for the purposes of risk management and accountability. Non-un.org domain names include all domain names that are used by Secretariat entities, but are independent of www.un.org. Users of independent non-un.org domain names must have appropriate procedures in place to ensure the timely renewal of the domain name upon expiration to avoid registration by a third party, thereby exposing the Organization to branding and operational security risks.

All Secretariat entities using non-un.org domain names must enter and update information on a regular basis about:

• the focal point(s);
• contact details;
• the domain name;
• the domain name registrar;
• dates of registration and expiration; and
• purpose of the independently registered website.

The registration data is managed by WSS/DGC; please .

Platform

What is the difference between a CMS and an HTML site? Do you need a CMS?

CMS

A content management system (CMS) is advantageous if your site, or major parts of it, are updated frequently and by multiple stakeholders who work collaboratively. Additionally, if you are actively maintaining databases like country data or a document repository, a CMS might be the best solution for you. CMS platforms come at a higher cost of development and maintenance, and may take longer times to deploy as they require more interactions between various departments of the Secretariat and constant security updates. The Office of Information and Communications Technology (OICT) has selected Drupal as the CMS for United Nations websites.

HTML sites

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), is a standardized system for tagging text files in a way that can be rendered by web browsers. HTML sites are considered flat sites in the sense that the data on the site is not generated dynamically. HTML sites allow quicker customization and are usually faster to build and are the recommended solution if your site does not require frequent updates and does not rely on databases.

Do HTML and CMS sites look different?

No. HTML and CMS sites may in fact look identical and the solution chosen will have no impact on the look and feel of the site.