Staff profile guidance

Staff profiles are featured on the site to showcase information that may be relevant to prospective students interested in the courses/research they are connected to. In this respect, they are part of our student recruitment strategy. 

If you are a new member of staff or haven't yet had a staff profile created, please contact digitalsupport@derby.ac.uk to request that a profile be set up.

If you are a staff member who is soon to be leaving the University/a member of your team has left, please contact digitalsupport@derby.ac.uk to request the removal of this profile.

Creating your staff profile

  • Log into TerminalFour, our content management system (CMS) 
  • You will need to use your single sign-in to log on, this is the same login that you use to log into University computers and web-based services 
  • You will have access to your profile, which will appear as a folder with your name on that you need to click. Please note: if you have access to an incorrect folder or no folders, please email digitalsupport@derby.ac.uk 
  • After clicking on your folder, you will see the section details information. Click on the content tab above
  • On the staff profile section, select the 'Actions' button and select edit
  • Fill the page with the required information, which is detailed in the writing guidance below 
  • When you are happy with your profile, click the 'Save changes' blue button at the bottom right-hand side of the page. Please note: if you do not press save and leave the page at any point all progress will be lost
  • You will then be brought back to the content tab
  • Go to the Section Config line, use the 'Actions' button and select edit, as done before for the staff profile component 
  • Log into TerminalFour
  • We advise that when updating your staff profile to do as alongside our writing guidance, to ensure our web content provides a good user experience for all audiences
  • Please refer to our specific photo guidance to see what requirements are necessary and how to add a photo to your profile if this hasn't previously been done
  • Once the changes have been made, please email digitalsupport@derby.ac.uk to notify a member of the team.
  • If you need any additional support or have any further questions please contact digitalsupport@derby.ac.uk 

Writing guidance

  • Please write your staff profile in the first person 
  • Keep the tone friendly but professional
  • Aim to be clear and concise to ensure the content remains engaging and easy to access for our site visitors
  • Please use hyperlinks rather than long strings of URL links
  • Avoid linking to PDF content. Information published in a PDF is harder to find, use and maintain. More importantly, unless created with sufficient care, PDFs can often be bad for accessibility and rarely comply with open standards. HTML links are preferred
  • Please ensure any dates mentioned do not include 'th', 'nd', 'rd' or 'st' after them in order to comply with our brand guidelines

Please note: we may edit your content to fit the guidance in this article if it is submitted without matching these recommendations.

  • Title
  • First name (required)
  • Surname (required)
  • Job title (required) 
  • Email
  • Twitter: your Twitter handle
  • LinkedIn: full URL to your LinkedIn profile
  • Website: full URL to your professional website or blog 
  • ORCiD ID: your full 16-digit ID with dashes
  • About (required): aim for 100-300 words. Summarise the main aspects of your role and what your focus is (teaching, research, management etc)
  • Teaching responsibilities: aim for 50-300 words. Outline the key subjects you teach. You can include course names and links to those courses if appropriate 
  • Professional interests: aim for 100-300 words. Talk about your general professional interests 
  • Research interests: aim for 100-300 words. Describe the fields/topics of research you are active in. Try to use language that most people will understand; avoid overly scientific or industry-specific terms
  • Membership of professional bodies: use a bullet point list to keep things concise and easy to skim read. You can also include any awards or accolades associated with professional bodies 
  • Qualifications (required): present these as a simple bullet point list, starting with your earliest qualification and the University it was awarded by e.g. 'BSc (Hons) Human Psychology - Aston University'. You can also include your degree classification 
  • Recent conferences: aim for 100-300 words. Avoid presenting a long list of all your conference presentations in the last few years. Discuss the subjects you have spoken about recently and where some of these presentations took place
  • Experience in the industry: aim for 50-300 words. Describe your past or present industry roles or consultancy work. They key aim here is to show that you have experience beyond academia 
  • International experience: aim for 50-300 words. If you have any experience of working internationally, either in industry roles or as a consultant or lecturer, summarise this here
  • Additional interests and activities: aim for 50-300 words. If you are involved in other activities which aren't covered in other areas of your profile but that you feel are integral to who you are and what you believe in, you could briefly explain these here
  • In the media: aim for 50-300 words. If you or your work has been featured in the media (press, radio, TV, online) briefly mention it here. You may wish to provide links to specific pieces of content
  • Recent publications: aim for 5-20 publications in total, or under each sub-heading. Provide a list of publications in date order, starting with the most recent. Include the title, author(s) and year as a minimum. Focus on the most recent or the most important publications. You can provide a link to your ResearchGate (or similar) profile for a full list

Please note: the publications/conferences list does not need to conform to the same standards as an academic bibliography. 

The Section config is a content type used to tell the website what content is in your section. It is used across the website for all types of content and does include fields that you can ignore which aren't relevant to a staff profile. 

  • Abstract (required): limited to approx. 65 words. Written in a professional tone in the third person, the abstract should summarise your main roles at the University. The abstract will be shown when your profile appears in search
  • Thumbnail image square: please refer to the photo guidance accordion
  • College(s): select relevant options from the available list
  • Research centre(s): select relevant options from the available list
  • Subject(s): select relevant options from the available list
  • Department(s): select relevant options from the available list
  • Audience: select relevant options from the available list
  • Location(s): select relevant options from the available list
  • Staff number (required)
  • Language(s): select relevant options from the available list
  • Job type: select relevant options from the available list 

Please note: based on tags for college, departments etc. your profile can be pulled into relevant areas of the site. It is important you fill these out accurately.

Photo guidance

We can take care of adding your photo to your profile, providing your photo meets the above requirements. Please email your request to digitalsupport@derby.ac.uk, alternatively you can follow the below steps and upload it yourself.

Your photo can be one you already have, can be taken yourself (a mobile phone camera is fine) or from Thirdlight, the University image library. 

Your photo must meet the following requirements: 

  • Square crop, between 1200px and 2000px in width and height (if downloading from Thirdlight, there is an option for a 'staff profile thumbnail' size)
  • Fit in with the brand style by not using cold blank backgrounds and sterile headshots. It shouldn't be taken in a 'selfie-style'
  • We recommend showing a related working environment or a professional event such as an Open Day or conference 
  • Compress your image: before you upload the image it needs to be compressed, we recommend using TinyJPG. This will not reduce the dimensions of your image, it will optimise the file size to improve loading time for users
  • Add to the Media Library: on the 'Media Categories' navigation in the 'Media Library' in T4, open up the categories and select 'derby.ac.uk' followed by 'staff profile images'
  • Click on the '+ media' button, where you will be able to drop the file into the box
  • Under the name field type in your name
  • In the description box, fill in the details of the photograph such as who is in it or the background. It is very important this field is filled in accurately as this information will be used by Google and it will also be used to explain what is in the image for anyone using a screen reader (this increases accessibility and is a legal requirement)
  • Press save changes in the bottom right hand corner
  • Add the image to your profile by returning to the Section Config component on your profile
  • Click on the 'Thumbnail image square' and select your image from the Media Library
  • When you have completed editing the Section Config, click save