What do you need to make your Web site work?

• Style manual
• Consistent navigation -- Where do you start? Where do you end? How do you get there? How do you know what is important?
  CLUES
  • Size
  • Style
  • Color
  • CAPITALIZATION
  • Placement
  • Legibility
• Authority and accuracy (including correct spelling)
• Mission statement defining your audience

How do you get these things?

• Brainstorm everything ever
• Draw/map out your site -- use notecards, sticky notes, a chalkboard, whatever
• Design an easy-to-understand physical structure for your files
• Design a template to make creating new pages easier
• Make some decisions and write them down. Call them your "Style Manual." Make sure everyone knows there is a style manual.

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• Who is your audience?
• Sections of your site and how they become your navigation
• How often do you want to update your site?
• Do you capitalize "Web?" Do you hyphenate e-mail?
• What sites are okay to link to?
• Is it okay to change the color of links?
• Should there be a date on each page?
• Are there required elements for every page?
• Can you use Templates to make things easier?
• 12 Web Page Design Decisions Your Business or Organization Will Need to Make -- fill out this survey to start your Web site policy!
• Font Faces -- fonts on PCs look different than they do on Macs
• Copyright Guidelines for Web Developers
• Color Choices

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• SLS resources
  • SLS Web Page Style Manual
  • SLS Web Page Procedure Manual
  • SWAC Web Site Philosophy and Web Page Procedures questionnaires
     
• Creating Your Site's Style Guide -- advice for defining your site's structure, visual style, layout, terminology, rules for using names (first names only?), etc.
• Web Design for Librarians
• Yale C/AIM Web Style Guide -- things to do
• Sucky to Savvy -- things to NOT do
• Web Pages that Suck -- return of things to NOT do
• The Top 15 Mistakes of First Time Web Design -- bride of things to NOT do
• Some Examples of Bad Web Design -- son of things to NOT do
• Checklist of WWWeb Design Errors -- things to NOT do: the next generation

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• What is your school already doing?
• School Libraries on the Web and HotList of K-12 Internet School Sites-- see what other schools are doing
• Let others do the work for you: weather (Leyden High School), maps, Homework Helper sites, etc.

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• Consider
  • The Web-Safe Palette (WSF)
  • The physical size of the image
  • Compression
  • Re-use the same graphic over and over
• VisiBone's Color Lab
• Everyone's Guide to Optimizing Graphics
• GifOptimizer -- also lets you do graphics on your hard drive before you upload them
• Create your graphics online: NetStudio, WebFX, Cool Archive Button Maker, MediaBuilder's ButtonMaker, CoolText.com, The Banner Generator,

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• Print your page to see what it looks like on paper
• TagCheck
• BrowserCheck
• SiteInspector -- checks your HTML, browser compatibility, spelling, load time, and more
• Web Page Monitor Tester
• Bobby
• WebTV Viewer Tool
• Web Page Evaluation Checklist
• Decide which of these are required or recommended, write them down, and call it your "Procedure Manual."

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• Check your links regularly using Xenu's Link Sleuth or URL Verifier
• Get feedback, even if it means using forms from free services such as Mailform
• Plan to re-design your site -- it's always a work in progress!

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• Issues in Creating and Managing School and Library Web Sites, especially the section dealing with Management and Policy Issues
• Creating Web Pages for K-12 Schools and Libraries
• Designing School Web Sites to Deliver
• School Web Page Development Guide
• ThinkQuest's Web Resources on Accessibility -- in part because it discusses several important considerations, not just accessibility issues
• Developing Web Page Policies or Guidelines

SLS Home	INFO TECH HOME	Jenny Levine levinej@sls.lib.il.us
Suburban Library System Burr Ridge, IL	http://www.sls.lib.il.us/infotech/presentations/schoolwebs.html	Reviewed: June 14, 1999 Disclaimer