In order to maintain a current and accessible web presence, Lafayette College archives and deletes a website when it is no longer needed, the individual(s) responsible for it have stepped down from their responsibilities, or it is no longer maintained.
If a site has not been updated in the last 12 months, College Archives will review the site to determine if it should be archived. If so, they will verify that there is a copy of the website in the College’s web archive.
Information Technology Services (ITS) will then notify the site’s administrators that the College considers the website out of date and will make the site inaccessible in 30 days. An inaccessible website can not be reached by the public, but site administrators can access it and the content remains.
If there is no response from the site administrators, ITS will send a second notice email notifying them that the College has made their site inaccessible and will delete it in five months time.
Five months after the second notice — six months after the site was flagged for deletion — ITS will send a final notification about the website’s imminent deletion. Twenty-four hours later, ITS will delete the site.
Within 30 days of an employee or student leaving the college, College Archives will verify that there is a good copy of the website in the College’s web archive. Once the archive is verified, the site is made inaccessible to the public and scheduled for deletion in six months’ time.
Alumni retain access to their websites until January of the year following their graduation. Starting in January, College Archives will verify the archive for each alumni site. Once the archive is verified, the site is made inaccessible to the public and scheduled for deletion in six months’ time.
From time to time departments, offices, and individuals find they need to rename the web address of their website.
ITS and the Communications Division evaluate requests to rename websites on a case-by-case basis based on how difficult the sites are to move and what systems such a move would affect.
When ITS renames a site it will redirect traffic from the old site to the new site according to the “Redirecting Web Traffic” policy.
ITS will redirect all traffic from the former site to a landing page on the new site explaining the redirect and pointing to important resources on the new website. This redirect will be maintained for six months. The College does not maintain one-for-one page redirects.
When ITS archives, deletes, or redirects a website the Communications Division will identify internal and external links which reference old content and make every effort to contact the administrators of those sites and advise them of the forthcoming change.