Site Requirements and Recommendations
Requirements
All official St. Olaf web pages (i.e., those which are intended
as official public information about academic and administrative
departments, offices and other divisions of the college, and excluding
personal home pages and student organization pages) must adhere
to the following requirements. By using the
Dreamweaver
templates, your site will automatically meet all requirements.
Official St. Olaf Web Site Department Headers
Each official web site must have a "banner" created to
match the the St. Olaf site design. You can create your banner
online by visiting the Web System Tools.
Your banner is automatically included on your pages when you use the Dreamweaver templates
Official St. Olaf Web Site Footer and College
Identification
Every official St. Olaf web site must include clear identification
of St. Olaf College. This can be accomplished by including the
college's
standard web site "footer" at the bottom of each of your
pages:
By using the Dreamweaver templates, the footer is already included on your pages.
Typeface
Official St. Olaf web sites should use the Cascading
Style Sheets (CSS) developed by members of the St. Olaf web
team. Applying a stylesheet to each page of your web site will give
the site a consistent look and feel in typeface and color. The
college stylesheets are already included with the standard
Dreamweaver templates.
Navigation/Menu of Links/Link Integrity
On all pages of your web site, links to the main areas of your site
must be included on the left-hand side. All links throughout your
site must function. As content on the web is ever-changing, so are
pages to which you might link. Check your links at least once a
month to ensure that they function and lead to the page you desire.
If you are linking to an external web site (i.e., a site other than
the St. Olaf College web site), it is recommended that the link
open in a new browser window.
Departmental Contact Information
Department contact information should be included on most (if not
all) of your web site's pages, including department name, street
address, phone, fax and e-mail contact.
Proofreading
As an academic institution, St. Olaf requires that college web pages
be free of spelling errors. For questions about college style (capitalization,
punctuation, etc.), review "Style
Matters" on the Communications/Marketing web site. Copyediting
assistance is also available.
Content Accuracy
It is important that the content of your web site is up-to-date
and accurate. Please check with the appropriate office regarding
all facts and figures on your web site. It is also advised that
you review content on your site at least monthly and update as necessary.
If you need assistance updating your web site, please contact webmaster@stolaf.edu.
Recommendations
Accessibility, Usability and Browser compatibility
Official pages should be viewable and usable by the broadest range
of platforms, browsers, and equipment. Official pages should be
viewable with at least the following browsers: Netscape 4.x and
higher; Firefox 1.5 and higher; Internet Explorer 5.x and higher; Safari (Mac only) and AOL. It is recommended
that you use both Internet Explorer and Firefox on PC and Firefox and Safari on
Macintosh to ensure that your pages may be viewed consistently
by the greatest number of users. You may also wish to consider what
your site may be viewed like using other browsers such as Opera
or WebTV.
Page width
All official pages should be fully viewable on a 800x600 pixel
screen without horizontal scrolling. Practically, this means
that defined
table widths or combined widths of images should not exceed 780
pixels.
Alternate text
To facilitate use by text-only browsers, every image should be accompanied
by an ALT tag with descriptive text explaining the image. Spacing
gifs, bullets, and other incidental images should use an empty ALT
tag (ALT="").
Images
All images should specify HEIGHT and WIDTH to facilitate efficient
page download.
