Guidelines for Creating Web Pages
Creating
and Publishing Faculty Web Pages
Academic Department Web Pages Policy
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Your may put whatever you want on the web,
provided it adheres to Haverford's Acceptable
Use Policy and to the Academic Department
Web Pages Policy.
A web page is an official college publication, and
should be treated as such. Many of the procedures you use to create
and review printed information can and should be applied to this electronic
medium. In fact, some of your printed information can be translated
into HTML and put on the web (with a little massaging).
When creating your page, please keep a few points
in mind.
Review
other sites
The first step in designing a good web page is to
browse other pages, specially those which may be similar to the type
of page you want to create. Look at other Haverford departments, as
well as peer departments at other colleges. Look at the content, the
layout, the graphics, and other parts of the presentation. Notice the
features you really like, as well as those you find less appealing.
Jot down addresses for sites you found especially helpful; you can create
links to these pages from your own pages.
Consider
your audience
Current students, prospective students, former students,
neighbors, colleagues at other institutions, curious on-lookers, and
disoriented web surfers will all have access to your web pages. Everybody
looking at your page will have their own interests. Since you have limited
time and resources to create your department's pages, you must decide
which audiences are most important to you. Start by targeting information
toward these groups. You can always add more information later.
Note: You can restrict access to all or some of
your pages to people on the Haverford, Bryn Mawr and Swarthmore campuses.
Contact us, compctr,
for details.
Be
professional, and academically oriented
Unlike personal pages, the department home page,
and all the pages linked to the department home page, are an
official representation of Haverford College. As such, they should be
academically oriented. While some personal information may be appropriate
on faculty home pages, such information should be kept to a minimum.
Do not discuss private commercial interests (i.e. business ventures
other than those which Haverford College is directly involved in) in
any pages linked to your department's pages.
Links to commercial interests outside of Haverford
may be appropriate in a limited number of cases. Use your judgment.
With all pages, ask yourself (and others in your department):
- Do the contents of this web page fit within the
mission of my department and Haverford College?
- Are the contents of this web page presented in
a clear, professional manner?
Conform to the look, feel and conventions of your
department
Your class and personal web pages will be physically located in the
folder for your department. They will likely be linked from the departmental
site. Check with you department chair, or department web administrator,
to see what style guidelines or file naming conventions are used by
your department.
Follow
design principles
Some of the rules for designing written pages carry
over well to web pages; others do not. Web pages can have lots of bells
and whistles: fancy backgrounds, pictures, sounds, even video. They
can also be interactive with the user.
All these bells and whistles can enhance a page
in ways that cannot be duplicated on paper, or even video. Yet, many
times these bells and whistles just take a long time to load, are visually
distracting, and confuse your message. Unless you have a specific goal,
and are willing to spend a lot of time making your web page, your best
bet is to keep it simple. Remember, people will read this information
on computer screens. Conservative use of color, generous use of white
space, and restrained use of fonts, go a long way toward making your
page interesting and readable.
Avoid features like
text (which many people find annoying), large graphics (which take a
long time to load, especially over dial-in phone lines), unusual backgrounds
(you'll see why after browsing some pages), and non-essential audio
or video (which takes a long time to download, and will not work on
many systems).
Many web pages discuss style. Here are a few:
- The Style
Guide for On-Line Hypertext. Written by Tim Berners-Lee. This
guide covers a lot of information. It is an excellent reference for
serious web authors. «http://www.w3.org/hypertext/Web/Provider/Style/»
- Review
of Web Style Guides. Written by the National Center for Supercomputing
Applications (NCSA) this site is more a style guide than a review.
If you can get past the ugly layout, you'll find good suggestions
on creating a site. «http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/edu/trg/styleguide/»
- 100 Do's and
Don'ts in Web Design. Found on the Spider Pro site, maintained
by Jan Kampherbeek, this site gives some quick and helpful tips.
- Web
Style Guide. An online version of
the comprehensive, yet readable book of
the same name, by Patrick J. Lynch, Sarah
Horton.
<<http://www.webstyleguide.com>>
As these style guides mention, there are several
components to good web design. One component is layout; the page should
look appealing and readable. However, a well designed web page is also
accurate, up-to-date, well labeled, and has clearly-written, relevant
content.
Create pages that are accessible to all
Either due to a physical disability, an old computer, or a state of
the art handheld computer, users may be unable to read some content.
Most problems are avoided easily by keeping pages simple, adding ALT
tags wherever graphics are used, and offering text links in addition
to graphic links. However, there are a wide variety of people who may
need to access your web pages. Remember that some readers may be blind,
deaf, colorblind, or simply using technology which does not allow them
to view large, high-resolution graphics.
The following resources will help you create accessible pages:
- Designing More Usable
Web Sites. Written by the Trace Center. This site talks about
making web sites available to all users, including those with a variety
of disabilities. Founded in 1971, Trace has been a pioneer in the
field of technology and disability. Their site has good advice, and
links to a variety or other helpful sites, some of which are noted
below. «http://trace.wisc.edu/world/web/»
- Checklist
of Checkpoints for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0. Written
by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). As the name suggests, this
page provides a checklist you can use to see if your page is accessible.
Because making pages accessible can create more work for the designer,
the checklist categorizes items as higher or lower priority. Even
if you don't have time to read anything else on accessibility, read
this page. Whether or not you follow all the suggestions, it's
important to know what they are. The W3C is the organization which
create web standards. The checklist is the product of lots of input
and debate by those who study and care about this issue. «http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/full-checklist.html»
- Bobby. Written by CAST.
This site provides a tool to check your site for accessibility problems.
A number of similar tools exist, but Bobby has been around a long
time and is one of the best. CAST is an educational, not-for-profit
organization that uses technology to expand opportunities for all
people, including those with disabilities. «http://www.cast.org/bobby/»
Check
for Accuracy
As with any document or publication, all your department
web pages should be accurate. Check spelling and grammar, as well as
content. Dreamweaver, our supported web page editor, includes a spell
checker.
Sign
and date your page
All web pages should contain the name and email
address of their author, along with the date they were last updated.
This will help the reader identify how current the information is, and
gives the reader a place to send updates and corrections. This is important
with any work, but especially on the web, where any page may be linked
to completely different information than was originally planned by the
author. Remember, a student in South Africa may create a link to your
page describing graduation requirements for a list she maintains on
Quaker Colleges...or, for that matter, for a list on exotic fish. (Remember,
not all web sites make sense!)
Note: Secretary, students, or others creating
a page for a professor should put the professor's name in the tag line,
and include their own initials. This follows in the tradition long used
in paper communications.
Create
navigational aids
Navigational links help web surfers find their way
back from the many links they tend to follow. It also helps surfers
locate where they are. Since your department pages are official pages
of the college, they should provide a link back to our home page. Furthermore,
pages within your department should link back to your departmental home
page.
To further help readers find their way around your
pages, it helps to make your Navigational tools consistent from page
to page.
Adhere
to copyright restrictions
Copyright restrictions are tricky in any medium.
They are especially tricky on the web, where electronics and links make
data so malleable. If in doubt about whether you can put something on
your page, request permission from the publisher of that item. The traditional
"fair use" policy for educational purposes may apply differently on
the web, because your pages are accessible from many sites.
For more information see our copyright
page.
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