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The University of Maine at Farmington operates three primary websites: far-archive.spark451.io (also named farmington.edu) myCampus and UMF Athletics. Each site serves different purposes and audiences.

There are a handful of other owner-operated “official” websites (Emery Community Arts Center, UMF Art Gallery, Gold Leaf, and some others) but those are not part of the University’s portfolio of sites that receive technical support from UMF or the UMaine System IT Groups.

umf.maine.edu | farmington.edu

This is the public-facing, nearly 1,200+ page official University website. It’s the site Marketing is involved with — to a point. (More on this below)

Technically, it is far-archive.spark451.io but we also purchased the domain name farmington.edu, which is used in Admissions student recruitment materials and in advertising. Both URLs work, both are registered to the University of Maine at Farmington, they are interchangeable.

The UMF website primarily serves as a student recruitment / sales tool. It’s written and presented by Marketing in friendly, conversational layman’s terms, as opposed to cold Catalog-ese, and is targeted to high schoolers, parents of high schoolers, prospective transfer students and increasingly, to adult learners.

It serves secondarily as a place for the general public to learn about the University in general terms.

It is not intended to serve as a resource tool for current students or UMF employees, although some of its pages and features may be helpful for those audiences.

Note: Our public website is created and managed by two different groups

Subsites and pages marketing is responsible for creating and managing

At last count, this comprises 8 subsites and 450 total pages.
These are primarily student recruitment-focused pages, including pages and visual content on:
the UMF Homepage
the About UMF section
the Academics section, including each academic program and certificate program
the Campus Life section
the Admissions & Aid section, and a few others.
Marketing also assists Graduate Studies and Continuing Education with their subsites.
A page UMF faculty often seem interested in is the People Lookup page, a tool that displays a roster of faculty for each Academic Division and Academic Department within a Division. Marketing generally updates the content (text and portraits) twice a year and a message is typically sent from the Provost requesting faculty to review their biography and send Marketing any updates. Marketing also sends a separate message inviting faculty and staff to attend an optional new portrait shoot, if they like.
A new process for updating faculty portraits and biographies will be announced soon.

Note: We are frequently asked why the portrait photo and some other items on People Lookup do not match what appears on myCampus. It’s a valid question. The answer is the portrait photos, titles and contact info on the public website’s People Lookup pages is totally separate from the portrait photos, titles and contact info that appears on myCampus. Marketing has no control over what appears on myCampus and vice versa. They are two separate, unconnected systems.

Subsites and pages others are responsible for creating and managing

At last count, this comprises 52 different subsites, each with a different “owner,” and nearly 900 total pages.
These departmental subsites include pages and content for sites such as Facilities Management, Fitness & Recreation Center, Mantor Library, Merrill Center Student Services, Public Safety / Campus Police, Office of Global Education, Student Health Clinic, Testing Services, etc.
Academic and Administrative departments are not required to have their own subsites. In fact, many chose to shutter their sites in 2020 as part of the campuswide www2 web migration project.
Marketing does not review or work on any of these subsites or their individual pages.
The accuracy, presentation and ADA compliance of these subsites is the sole responsibility of each subsite “owner,” typically the department director of chair who decided they needed to have a subsite.
Marketing does, however, assign User Roles for every subsite and is happy to provide some basic emergency website assistance to employees who work on departmental subsites.
For a number of reasons, Marketing & Communications does not provide training for students or student-workers subsite “owners” may have hired to maintain their web pages. We will work with department staff (UMF employees) who should then train their student workers. This policy has been in effect since IT was involved in departmental websites. Like IT, Marketing simply doesn’t have the staff bandwidth to train students.
Marketing maintains a helpful Best Practices for Departmental Web Pages web page subsite Editors can use to maintain and improve their pages. More about this, below.

The University of Maine at Farmington was the first campus in the University of Maine System, and the second college in the state, to launch a website on the Information Superhighway (circa 1996). It was called UMF Online.

Website Best Practices Recommendations

We’ve developed a page of Best Practices recommendations for maintaining your UMF departmental subsite. While not an exhaustive, definitive WordPress Owner’s Manual, it’s intended to provide some basic guidance on maintaining your subsite.

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myCampus

This is the internal, password protected portal for students (current students and accepted not-yet-students) and employees. The public cannot access it.

Sometimes there’s confusion over where content belongs: far-archive.spark451.io or myCampus? In almost all instances, if the content is geared toward current students it belongs on myCampus. Why? New UMF students are trained very early on (even before Orientation) to stop using far-archive.spark451.io to find information and to instead use myCampus — and only myCampus. If the content is intended for employees, the same is true: myCampus is the place they’ll see it.

So, how do you get your content onto myCampus?
There’s a myCampus Committee for that! Contact them for assistance: [email protected]

Note: We are frequently asked frequently why the portrait photo and some other items on myCampus do not match what appears on the public website’s People Lookup. It’s a valid question. The answer is the database of portrait photos, titles and contact info on far-archive.spark451.io is totally separate from the database of different portrait photos, titles and contact info that appears on myCampus. Marketing does control what appears on myCampus and vice versa.

UMF Athletics

UMF Athletics is an official UMF website created and managed by the UMF Department of Athletics. It is totally separate from far-archive.spark451.io and myCampus.

For details and information about the UMF Athletics site, contact Director of Athletics Jamie Beaudoin [email protected]

Contact Us

Tom Donaghue
Senior Marketing & Advertising Manager and webmaster
Marketing & Communications
101 South Street
Farmington, Maine 04938
tel 207-778-7129
TYY (via Maine Relay Service) dial 711
[email protected]

Mailing address:
Marketing & Communications
111 South Street
Farmington, Maine 04938