Homepage

Homepage Specs and Components

Your site will likely have a homepage that welcomes your site visitors with relevant, accurate, up-to-date content, followed by a series of index pages that help your site visitors quickly access important information and complete necessary tasks.

Homepage Specs

Image pointing to the feature, spotlight and widget areas on a homepage.

Homepage Components

Feature Area

The feature section is a required element for all USF homepages. It will display immediately below the header. The section is highly customizable.

 Variations include: 

  • Image
    • small image with one widget area to the right/left of image
    • large image
    • full-width image
  • Video
    • small video with one widget area to the right/left of the video
    • full-width video
  • Rotator with 2-5 images or graphics
    • small images 
    • large images

Horizontal Call to Action

The purpose of the call to action boxes is to drive traffic to specific functionality on your website. For example, at different points of the year, you may want to drive prospective students to apply, or donors to give, or community members to attend a campus event.

In order to implement this option successfully, you need to identify your key audience(s), analyze their needs and meet those needs by producing a call to action that allows them to complete a specific task that you know is important to them. The call to action boxes must meet certain specifications: 

  • each headline has a character limit of 20
  • each summary has a character limit of 50
  • each CTA must have an icon, created by UCM
  • each CTA must link to a web page
  • there must be three or four calls to action

Highlighted Content Section

The highlight content section is designed to draw attention to content that is special. The section includes an image, text and hyperlink. This could be used to highlight a news story, event or other piece of content such as an annual report. 

Note: Title and link at bottom of text will hyperlink to the same content. 

Widgets

The row of widgets appears above the footer and is a required element for all USF homepages. The section is highly customizable.

Options include:

  • three one-column widgets
  • one two-column widget plus one one-column widget
  • one three-column widget

Learn more about widgets.