Best Practices

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Last Updated: Oct 04, 2024, 10:15 AM

Website Tips

Planning a site

  1. Start Planning. Certain things need to be determined before building any pages or design
    • Who is my audience?
    • What should my navigation be?
    This will help you get the overall structure of the website and help you determine content for each page.
  2. Gather the content and additional materials (like images, pdf, doc files).
  3. Less is more. Long-winded welcome messages are not desired by end users. Keep the length of all pages short until the users get to the "guts" of the content. Filler content is not useful and users tend to leave the site.
  4. It is harder to maintain duplicate pieces of content. Instead of posting the same content that is hosted on a different site, just link to that page. If the content ever changes, then it only has to be done once and it is not out of date.

Designing a site

  1. Apply a consistent look through out your entire site. It is less confusing for the user when everything looks similar. Templates are useful for this and also make your site easier to maintain. Check the University requirements for design.
  2. You can use any Web editors like Dreamweaver to start building your web site. Some programs have built-in templates you can use. Just remember you need to have the SIUC Requirements on each page.
  3. When using background colors or images and text colors, make sure they are contrasting enough to be able to read text and for accessibility purposes. 
  4. Images should be compressed for a web for faster load and download times. Make sure to also scale the image's dimensions down to the size needed instead of setting the height and width properties in the code. This should apply to videos and audio too.
  5. The standard monitor screens are 1024 x 780 and higher. To avoid having to horizontally scroll, set the width to 980px or use a fluid layout that can adjust to wider or narrow screens.

Developing a site

  1. Your website should be checked in different browsers (Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari) and on different platforms (Mac and PC).
  2. HTML, CSS, and Accessibility should be validated before going live with your site. Firefox's Web Developers toolbar has all three checks listed under the "tools" menu. Validate your HTML and CSS before checking the Accessibility. Running these validations also helps maintain a consistency across all browsers.
  3. Keep the size smaller of your HTML pages and all of your other elements' link images, javascript includes, videos, etc. Load times are still important to users.
  4. If you are linked to larger documents (over 150k), place the size of the document after the link to users know the download might take some time to complete.
  5. Content in flash elements is not accessible at this time. Therefore it should only be used for non-content related elements (like photo rotations). Flash web sites are required to have HTML versions of the site with the same content that is in the Flash.
  6. Items that need plug-ins to run should have a link to where the user can download the plug-in.
  7. Accessibility is not a suggestion, it is a requirement. It is required by Illinois Information Technology Accessibility Act (IITAA) that all University sites are accessible. Click here for more validation information.

Maintaining a site

  1. Each account owner or web designate is responsible for updating and maintaining their pages. Content should be reviewed at least once per semester to prevent outdated information. Fresh and useful content will keep users coming back to your site.
  2. Set a schedule to check links that go to other sites to make sure they are still active links. This can be done by simply going to the W3C's link checker page and entering your web address: https://validator.w3.org/checklink

If this does not answer your question please fill out a Service Ticket and one of our web development professionals will process your request as soon as possible.