Web Policies

Cornell College Checklist for Departmental Web Pages
Content, Style, Color, Images
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DIRECTIONS: Please use this basic checklist to include all or many of these elements. The “same look and feel” orients users to navigate Cornell’s Web site, i.e., consistent media increases comprehension of the content. Please use this Web Policies site for other specific details, examples, and explanation of terms. More information on how to receive assistance from human beings is available at the end of this checklist.
Highly recommended:
_____ Links to catalog (Please see links for more details.)
_____ Links to the current Term Table
_____ Links to online syllabi/course pages (Use course page templates inside of departmental folders so they are accessible to prospectives. Contact Webteam if they are not in your folder.)
_____ Links to listing of faculty and brief biographies
_____ Links to faculty personal pages when available
_____ Links to appropriate section of Cole Library’s “research by topic” site
_____ Links to scholarship info, if appropriate
_____ Links to interdisciplinary major, if appropriate
_____ Links to research being done by faculty and students
_____ Information on majoring in your discipline such as the explanation in “Departments and Disciplines.” What are the top 5 careers they could have?
_____ Fine arts: Links to performance and exhibition calendars
_____ Information or links about what alumni are doing now (can use information from your Fact Sheet)
_____ Information or links about off-campus study opportunities and class trips, if applicable
_____ Link to an e-mail alias 'mailto' (to receive questions, comments sent to the information provider, e.g., admissions@cornellcollege.edu) (Please see aliases for more details.)
_____ Standard Cornell departmental templates (Please see templates.shtml for more details.)
_____ Date in “Last date modified” changed within the template each time the page is edited. This should be automatic within the template structure, so don't fret.
_____ Keyword meta tag with related keywords
_____ Description meta tag with 1-2 sentences about the page
_____ Title (already in template; edit to be more specific as needed)
_____ File names in all lowercase (e.g., index.shtml, page1.shtml, pic1.jpg, button.gif, form_a.pdf)
_____ File names with no spaces (e.g., index.shtml, page1.shtml, pic1.jpg, button.gif, form_a.pdf)
_____ ALT tags for important images to be read as text alttags for more details.)
_____ No “blink” tags around text
_____ JavaScript independent (runs with or without it) (It’s ok on-campus; off-campus, we can’t rely on JavaScript.)
_____ Appropriate image format for the smallest file size: JPEG for photographs or pictures with many colors (.jpg) and GIF for drawings, low color, and most clip art (.gif). (Please see image/size for more details.)
_____ Default colors: black text, purple, purple visited link (Avoid changing link colors in the body tag unless absolutely essential for design.)
_____ Default text: Verdana.
_____ Set text to paragraph. Headers and can be "heading 1" using the style "purple header" (<h1 class="purple header">Your title</h1>)
_____ White or light-colored backgrounds with dark text (Light text does not show on printed files with dark backgrounds.)

Recommended:
_____ Designate (with permission) a few alumni to be contacted by prospective students or majors via e-mail
_____ Designate (with permission) a few current majors to be contacted by prospective students via e-mail
_____ Personalize an alumni update template form for your alumni (See English Dept for example)
_____ Information about departmental awards, lectures, events, etc., and photos
_____ Information or links about internship opportunities
_____ Information or links about clubs, if applicable
_____ Information or links to others unique to department
_____ Links to useful outside pages relevant to department
_____ Overall page size: approximately 30k or less including images
_____ Images: 15k or less per image
_____ No repeating animated gifs
_____ No frames
_____ No “under construction” notices left for over one week
_____ No counters
_____ Viewable on different browsers
_____ View on different screen sizes
_____ Viewable on a Mac or a PC since pages will look slightly different from one to another
_____ Use an HTML validator (info on this to be developed in the fall)
_____ <ABBR> and <ACRONYM> tags for accessibility used in speech readers (Please see abbr/acronym for more details.)

PROOFREADING, EDITING, PHOTOS:
Contact Dee Ann Rexroat, director of College Communications, x4241. OCC has stock photos of some faculty and departments.

POLICY REGARDING CONTENT:
According to Cornell’s Information Technology Policy, each department must designate an information provider responsible for the content of its
Web pages. Style and design guidelines and templates shall be used in preparing these pages. Every page shall include a standardized “mail to” link to its information provider, who shall be expected to reply in a timely and responsible fashion to e-mail inquiries generated by the pages and to Webmaster queries related to the pages. Information providers are responsible for keeping information as accurate and up-to-date as possible and grammatically correct and free of spelling errors.