FAQs & Resources

The UMC WordPress team offers monthly in-person training sessions to help users become familiar with our WordPress theme and content management tools.

To request a training session, please complete the WordPress Training Request Form. We also provide supplemental training for existing users who would like a refresher or want to learn more about newly available blocks, features and best practices.

We also provide an online WordPress Training Guide.

Almost all Wake Forest websites use the WordPress publishing platform offered by UMC. This platform offers many benefits, including training, support, security, accessibility, consistent branding and more. We’d love to talk to you if you are considering using a different platform or are already using one and are interested in migrating to the UMC platform.

Yes. Sites built within the UMC WordPress environment are required to use the WFU theme.

No. UMC will test and install plugins based on common web publishing needs.

More information on how plugins are handled can be found on the Plugins page on the WordPress Guide site.

If you have a request for a specific plugin you’d like to use, please submit a request using our Digital Service Request Form and let us know the details.

No. The Wake Forest theme is for use on official WFU sites only.

Only approved editors of a website can make changes to their sites. If you are an approved editor and are trying to log in off campus, you must connect to the Wake Forest VPN. Once connected, you will be able to access your site using your WFU credentials.

If you are not an editor on your site but need access to a WFU website, please let us know through the Digital Service Request Form.

The Gravity Form plug-in allows you to publish many types of forms on your site, including basic registration forms. Please refer to our WordPress Training Guide for details.

The University offers other solutions if you need to provide tickets or accept payment for your event.

Our WordPress Training Guide covers many WordPress topics.

Every WordPress site in our hosting environment includes a pre-production (PPRD) site. This staging site allows you to work on new content, pages and features without impacting your live site. For new sites, you’ll build and test everything on the staging site before making it live, ensuring a seamless transition and minimizing any potential disruptions to your live site.

No. This is the branding for Wake Forest University website and will appear on all pages within our WordPress theme.

Video on a page is typically added through YouTube embed links. For more information on how to do this, see our “Upload a Video” page on our WordPress Guide site.

Yes. The UMC WordPress theme was specifically designed and thoroughly tested to provide an optimal experience across desktop computers, tablets and mobile devices. While the theme is fully responsive, the way your content appears on different screen sizes ultimately depends on the content you create and how you organize and present it.

We strongly encourage all site editors and content managers to familiarize themselves with digital content strategy and web content best practices before publishing new content. Following these guidelines helps ensure your content is clear, accessible, easy to read and provides the greatest value for all visitors, regardless of the device they are using.

We collaborate closely with the university’s Accessibility Technology Team to ensure our themes and plugins are thoroughly tested to meet or exceed Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 standards. While not all aspects of accessibility can be automated, our training guide provides detailed guidance to help content editors maintain accessibility on their pages.

Pages and posts can be recovered from the Trash folder in WordPress.

Yes. WordPress gives you the ability to see 15 previous versions of a page and revert. Refer to our WordPress Training Guide for details.

Yes. WordPress has built-in password protection for each page. In the publishing settings of your page, you can set a password that you can share with the users you’d like to have access.

You can also restrict access to a page for just those with a wfu.edu email address. If you need to make the entire site or a section of a site private, please let us know so we can work with you on solutions.

On the Pages screen of the WordPress Dashboard, simply click the Trash link below a page title. Remember that if users have bookmarked a deleted page, they will get an error message when attempting to view it. For more information on page management, please see our WordPress Training Guide.

Your site navigation is based on the top-level pages you have on your site. Your site navigation will change based on what pages you add/remove from your list of pages. Within the CER WordPress theme, the number of links in your navigation is limited to what will fit in a single row (usually no more than eight or nine). You can have subpages, though, which will show up under the top-level pages in your main navigation.

Refer to our WordPress Training Guide for more information.

The theme’s color scheme and font styles have been carefully chosen in accordance with the University’s style guide. The Style Guide has more information about the approved fonts and colors.

Google and other search engines automatically crawl Wake Forest websites at regular intervals. If you would like to force a site to be indexed, please submit a request to the digital team.

Redirecting traffic from old pages can be very important to user satisfaction and search-engine behavior. Information on how to handle redirects is available in our WordPress Training Guide.

A digital strategy is an organization’s high-level plan for using digital technologies, data, and online platforms to achieve its organizational goals, improve operations, and create a competitive advantage to encourage users to use their products or services.

A digital content strategy provides a framework for planning, creating, managing and evaluating your online content. It focuses on ensuring your website supports your department’s goals while meeting the needs of your audience.

Key areas of a digital content strategy include:

• Aligning your content with your department’s goals and objectives
• Defining your target audience and writing content that meets their needs
• Organizing and presenting content in a clear, intuitive and user-friendly way
• Improving the visibility and discoverability of your content across search engines, AI-powered search experiences and other technologies
• Ensuring your content is accessible to users with disabilities and compatible with assistive technologies
• Establishing a plan for maintaining and keeping content accurate and up to date
• Measuring the performance of your content to determine whether it is achieving your intended goals and identifying opportunities for improvement

There are a number of resources you can take advantage of if you’re looking to improve your digital and content strategies. We recommend you start by familiarizing yourself with these pages:

• Digital Strategy
• Content Strategy
• Writing for the Web
• Organization and Presentation (of web content)
• Content Visibility

Digital content presentations are also available. You can watch the video presentation or view the slide deck for many of the previously offered presentations. We also encourage all site editors and content managers to attend future offerings if their schedules allow.

In addition to UMC’s dedicated WordPress team, the Strategic Communications team includes a digital strategy specialist who, in collaboration with Information Systems’ Technology Accessibility team, provides a variety of online resources, training opportunities and best-practice guidance for website editors, content managers and marketing professionals across Wake Forest University.

For additional information, visit our Digital Strategy section or reach out to Pete Nowak at .

Yes. Like millions of other websites, Wake Forest University’s websites are being impacted by the rapid adoption of Generative AI (GenAI) and AI-powered search tools such as ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and others. Even if you do not personally use these technologies, many of our prospective students, families and other audiences rely on them to discover and evaluate information about Wake Forest. As a result, it’s important that we adapt our content strategies to ensure our websites remain visible, discoverable and useful within an evolving search ecosystem.

To help the Wake Forest community navigate these changes, we offer a variety of resources focused on GenAI and content visibility through our Digital Strategy section on this website. We encourage you to explore our Digital Strategy Presentations page to access recordings and materials from previous sessions, register for upcoming presentations, or contact Pete Nowak directly at to learn more about developing content strategies that improve the visibility and effectiveness of your website.

Website analytics remain one of the most valuable tools for measuring the performance of individual pages and your website as a whole. While Generative AI (GenAI), AI-powered search experiences and zero-click searches have changed how people discover information about Wake Forest, they have not eliminated the need for visitors to engage directly with our websites. Many users still visit our sites to explore content, complete important tasks and make informed decisions.

Although traditional analytics can no longer provide a complete picture of how users discover and interact with our content across today’s evolving search landscape, they continue to offer valuable insights into user behavior, content performance and engagement. These metrics remain essential for evaluating the effectiveness of your website and identifying opportunities for improvement.

As AI technologies continue to evolve and reshape how content is discovered, University Marketing and Communications (UMC) will continue to refine its digital strategy, adopt emerging best practices and explore new methods for measuring content visibility and audience engagement. Our goal is to ensure that Wake Forest’s digital presence remains effective, measurable and well-positioned for the future of search.

A zero-click search occurs when a user finds the information they need directly within the search results or an AI-generated response and never clicks through to a website.

Yes. Explore our Digital Strategy Glossary to become familiar with the terminology and concepts commonly used when discussing websites, digital content and online strategy.

To report a technical issue (e.g., broken link, site timeout), submit a General Website Support form with as much detail as you can provide about the issue.

All third-level and fourth-level subdomain requests need to be submitted using the Request a New WordPress Site Request Form. All requests are reviewed by a committee consisting of representatives from Information Systems (I.S.) and University Marketing and Communications (UMC).

Some things to consider when requesting a new subdomain:

• It should reflect the content of the site
• It should not contain inappropriate words or phrases
• It should be unique and not have multiple applications
• It should be considered permanent, not for temporary use

Wake Forest offers a URL-shortening service (similar to bit.ly) using the wfu.edu domain. A “Go Link” can be requested at go.wfu.edu.

Most WFU sites use Siteimprove’s Analytics module to track site data. If you are a Siteimprove user, you have access to analytics for your website(s).

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) reports are also available if you’re looking for specific data not available in Siteimprove. In this case, submit a General Website Support form and let us know what your analytics needs are specifically for GA4.

Academic and administrative offices are listed on the university’s directory page.

To add a new office or department to the Campus Directory, or to update existing published information, please complete the Campus Directory Request Form and include all relevant details.

For photography requests, please use the Photo Request Form.

The WFU Web Style Guide offers downloadable logos for print collateral and websites.

While no website is completely immune to malicious activity, University Marketing and Communications (UMC), in partnership with the Information Systems Security team, takes proactive measures to safeguard your website, content and data. Critical security updates for WordPress and other server software are applied as quickly as practical to help protect against known vulnerabilities and minimize potential risks.

Please see our Gravity Forms page for information on what data can and cannot be collected on a WFU website.

If your information appears on a Wake Forest University departmental website, we recommend contacting the department responsible for the site and requesting that the information be removed. If you are unsure whom to contact, please submit a request through the General Website Support Form and include any relevant details, including the URL of the webpage where the information appears.