Guidelines for World Wide Web Pages and Other Electronic Publications
Use of these guidelines is encouraged.
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Official pages should be well designed and written, accurate and
truthful, grammatical and correctly spelled.
Always have someone else
look over your work before releasing it to the web. It is easy to make
mistakes that can be embarrassing to you and to the university.
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Remember this is the World Wide Web.
Many of the people
looking at your information will be from different countries with
different cultures and backgrounds. They may have a limited command
of English. Don't assume that your reader will know what you are
talking about. Avoid abbreviations and acronyms; if you must use acronyms,
spell out the words the first time you use them on each page or use the acronym tag:
<acronym title="Mississippi State University">MSU</acronym>
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Consider putting a link to Mississippi State's information desk/mail
box at msuinfo@ur.msstate.edu.
For instance, you could put the following at the bottom of your page:
For information about Mississippi State University, contact <a
href="mailto:msuinfo@ur.msstate.edu">msuinfo@ur.msstate.edu</a>.
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Consider putting the URL of the document on each page so that people who
print out your page will have a record of where they found it.
If your web
server supports server side includes (most do, including Archive), you can
generate that automatically by putting this bit at the bottom of your page:
URL: http://<!--#echo var="SERVER_NAME"--><!--#echo var="DOCUMENT_URI"-->
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Think carefully about how to organize your information.
Make it easy for
your readers to find the information they are seeking.
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Keep your pages as simple as possible.
Remember, most people using the web
still are using slow modem connections. Pages with many or large graphics will
take a long time to download and many people won't wait. Also, many people
use text-only browsers, which will not show pictures or video, at all.
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If you have links to large graphics, audio or video files, tell the user
how big the file is so she can decide whether she has time to download it.
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Don't design your page too wide.
Many users have monitors which only
display 640 pixels wide. It's not nice to force them to scroll.
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Try not to make your page too long.
Web surfers hate to scroll down, too.
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Avoid using complicated background patterns or colors;
they can make
the text on your page very difficult to read. Some combinations of text
and background colors can be completely unreadable by people with color
blindness. Maroon backgrounds seem to be especially difficult to use
successfully. Different computer monitors will display the same color
differently. A maroon background can be displayed as a range of colors
from pink to black, depending on the monitor used. It's best to
stick to a plain, light background with black text.
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Make your title succinct but meaningful and try to include "Mississippi State University".
Most search engines look at
the page's title for indexing information. A page titled "Our
Department" could be about almost anything, but one titled
"Department of Molecular Aesthetics (Mississippi State University)"
is pretty specific.
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Don't say "click here" and don't use an "under
construction" sign;
both are amateurish, and the web is always
under construction. If your page doesn't ever change,
it is stale. Don't create a page and abandon it. It
should be an on-going project, constantly improving.
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Don't duplicate the work of others.
Rather than copy a document
published by another department, link to it. If you copy a document
and the original is modified, your copy will be incorrect.
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Avoid using non-standard HTML tags and tags not supported
by many browsers.
It is tempting to use the newest and "coolest"
features, but if you do, your pages may not be usable by many people.
Useful Links
