These topics will help you learn how to increase the quality of your pages and improve the experience of your site visitors. Some of them are not only best practices, they are also required by law for accessibility. Others help improve the visibility of your pages in search engines, increasing the number of visitors to your site.Be sure to check out New York State's BEST PRACTICE GUIDELINE G06-001 for accessibility.

Naming - Files and Folders
Metadata Information - Page Titles and Descriptions
Site Structure - Navigation and Index Pages
Images - Size, Alt Text and Proper Use
Links - Different Types and Conventions
Page Appearance - Alignment and Fonts
Accessibility - Alt Text, Textual Equivalents, Tables and Forms
Other Topics -Campus Name, OmniUpdate Compatibility
Short Links - also called redirects, short addresses, short URLs

Naming:
Folders (aka, directories): Folders are especially important to properly name because they are used as link names in the "breadcrumb" navigation at the top of every page. Folder titles must be plain english without abbreviations. For muti-word folder names, use an underscore (_) to separate words in place of a space. Spell out "and" (the & is automatically added later) and do not use capital letters.

Files: Files should also be named with lowercase letters and underscores instead of spaces. It is important that all HTML files have the .html extension.
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Metadata Note that metadata is specified when you create a page or edited as follows:
1. Check the page out using the black lock icon
2. Return to the Page Editor and click on the Properties icon for the page
3. Make changes and save the page
4. Publish the page to make your changes live.
If you do not see the Properties icon when you check out a page you may not have the proper permissions. Please contact the Webmaster for assistance.

Page Titles: The title is the part of the page that shows up in the title bar of your Web browser. It is used as the link in Google search results. Page titles are a very important factor in determining search results on Google and other search engines. The format for page titles on the SUNY Oswego website is "SUNY Oswego - Department or Office Name: Page Topic". "SUNY Oswego - " is automatically added by OmniUpdate when a page is created, so all you need to add is your department or office name and the topic of the page.

Descriptions: Google and other search engines use page descriptions to help determine search results and display them as the text below a link in search results. It is important that the page description be plain English and simply describe what a visitor will find there.

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Site Structure:
Navigation: The primary form of navigation we use is the left side navigation file. This navigation is actually a separate file and should be created in each directory (folder) on your site. Use the "Primary Subpage Left Navigation"template and leave the file name "navigationlocal.html" to add left navigation to a directory. The navigation file in a directory should link to pages or subdirectories of that directory (or external sites if necessary). Each directory's navigation file will be used on every page within it. Contact the Webmaster with requests to have your site's navigation expand (indented) when you click on a link ot a file in that directory.

Index: Every directory (folder) must possess an index.html file. The index page in each directory is especially important because it is the default page that is served when one clicks on a directory name in the breadcrumb navigation. Therefore, you must have a page named index.html in each directory.

Summary of Site Structure: Folders need 2 things inside—a navigationlocal.html file to provide common navigation for all pages within the folder and an index.html file which becomes the default destination page when that folder name is surfed to (EX.: surfing to www.oswego.edu/athletics loads the index.html page for the /athletics/ folder the same as www.oswego.edu/athletics/index.html does. Also, when you click on "athletics" in the breadcrumb navigation, it loads that index.html page). When thinking about your site's navigation, think about keeping it modular directory-by-directory and ask for help making sub-folder navigation expand to show its choices in the left hand navigation.

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Images: More information on image sizes and editing images is available.
Size: Correct sizing of imageson your site is very important. Using an image that is too large for the area in which it is used can cause the page to appear "broken." Scaling an image down in the HTML code by using settings in the OmniUpdate Insert/Modify Imagetool will cause a user to unnecessarily download the full-sized image even though only a smaller version is visible. This causes longer download times and increases abandonment of your site.

Alt Text: New York State and federal accessibility standards mandate that each image on our site a textual alternative description of what the image is depicting. The alternative textual description is referred to as "alt text" and OmniUpdate will not allow you to insert an image without it. Make sure your alt text is actually descriptive of the image and not just the same thing over and over.

Proper Use: Only use graphics that appear professional. No unprofessional shareware graphics, icons, or animations will be allowed. The Webmaster may remove graphics deemed inappropriate without notice. A collection of campus images is available from which to select photos if you need them. If in doubt, ask the Webmaster about the image you plan on using.

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Links:
Different Types: Though all links on the SUNY Oswego site are written in the same way, there are three different "types" of links used. Contextual links exist in the main body copy section of your page. As their name implies they link a word or words in context to a relevant page. An good example of contextual links in action can be seen in the Admissions index page. Related links are located in the right column of your page and offer the user links to pages that are directly or indirectly related to the current page's content. Related links may be other pages within your site, other pages on the SUNY Oswego site or related outside links. Related links should come under the heading "RELATED LINKS:" in all capital letters ending with a colon. The links them selves should be upper and lower case treated as separate paragraphs.

Conventions:  When linking to external Web sites or on-campus Web sites that do not have the look of the main SUNY Oswego Web site, the convention is that the link be opened in a new window. This is accomplished by selecting "_blank" in the "Target Window" dropdown in OmniUpdate. When opening a new browser window, you must also include a title attribute after "_blank" as follows: title="This link opens in a new window." Links that go to something that will be downloaded by the user should also open in a new window using this same method. In addition to opening download links in a new window you also need to specify the type of file and it's size in parenthesis after the link. For example you would place the following after a link to a 37k PDF file: (.pdf 37KB). All MS Word, PowerPoint, Excel, PDFs and other downloadable content should be labeled.

In general, the title attribute should be used with every link that isn't self explanatory to increase the usability of our site for everyone.

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Page Appearance: Much of the formatting of the SUNY Oswego Web site is controlled by Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Using CSS to control page appearance is a requirement of the accessibility guidelines. It is important that the CSS be allowed to do its job in order to provide a consistent experience for everyone visiting the site. In-line text formatting defined by html that overrides the CSS is undesirable and will be removed at the Webmaster's discretion

Alignment: All text and images on a page should be aligned flush left.

Fonts:  The fonts used on the SUNY Oswego Web site are specified by the CSS. Therefore, different font faces, sizes, colors or backgrounds should not be used, and may be removed by the Webmaster.

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Accessibility: More information on accessibility can be found on the New York State Office for Technology site.

Alt Text: As mentioned above all imagesneed to have alt text that describes the image to benefit individuals surfing our site with screen readers.

Textual Equivalents: Textual equivalents are necessary for any non-text element of a page. This includes audio, video, flash and other interactive elements. If you are interested in using any of these things on your site please contact the Webmaster for more information and guidance.

Tables: Web accessibility guidelines discourage the use of tables for layout formatting within pages. Tables need to have a description of what is displayed when for data. Further, tables used to display data also need to specify which cells are the "header" cells and if the information is oriented horizontally or vertically. This is all necessary so that a screen reader can accurately present the information audibly to a site visitor. More in-depth information on accessible tables (.doc 374KB) is also available. If you use tables on your site make sure their borders are set to "0" to maintain consistency across the site.

Forms: Elements of a form in which the user will be entering information require a label. For more information on this please see the form creation guide.

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Other Topics:
Campus Name:Always change references to "Oswego State University" to either SUNY Oswego (preferred) or Oswego State.

OmniUpdate Compatibility: If using a Macintosh, use Firefox with the Universal Editor (OU's newest editor). For PC users, Firefox with the Universal Editor is one choice. Internet Explorer also works with both the old editor and the new editor.

Policy for Short Links

In order to make web addresses (URLs) easier to reproduce in print and in other media, campus departments may request that the webmaster create a redirect to their directories using a shorter URL. Long addresses can pose problems for users. Typos may result in the dreaded 404 File Not Found page. And URLs of more than 76 characters can exceed the limit for many text editors and e-mail clients.

At SUNY Oswego:

• Short links must go to an index page of a directory, not a specific page.
• Temporary short links may be created under special circumstances.
• Short links that have outlived their usefulness may be removed at the discretion of the webmaster.

Here's an example of a long link:
http://www.oswego.edu/academics/colleges_and_departments/departments/interdisciplinary/journalism/

This has been shortened to:
www.oswego.edu/journalism

To request a short URL, email the webmaster. Please include:

• the long web address
• reason for request
• requested short link (The webmaster will ultimately choose the best name. This is to avoid duplicates and to keep the overall structure of the website intact.)