Suggestions for Web Page Authors

The world wide web is an important and powerful public relations and communication medium for Bates College. To help the College make the best of this important tool and to put its best face forward, the Office of College Relations recommends the following suggestions to help make your page a more effective tool for your office, organization, or department.
The College Relations web team reviews official pages before they are linked into the Bates web site and may make additional recommendations. We encourage web authors and/or department heads to meet with OCR's technical and design staff prior to development of the web page to discuss concept, design, and any graphic or technical help we can provide. If the page is already under construction please see the OCR web team early on. Contact Ron Meldrum at x6330 (rmeldrum@bates.edu) to set up a meeting.
Personal home pages and student organization pages are not reviewed by the web team; however, the following suggestions may still help you as you design your page.

Simplicity is good. The more complex the page, the more difficult it is to (a) make it work reasonably well for the most popular browsers and (b) be effective in communicating your message. Complexity can be distracting to the visitor if not used carefully.

Keep pages small. Keep the overall page size (including graphic elements) to under 50K. This decreases the time that browsers spend downloading the page. Since much of our audience is using America Online (AOL), relatively slow modems, and K-12 networks, it's important to keep download time to a minimum to avoid losing or alienating part of your audience.

Use backgrounds sparingly and advisedly. It's difficult to make backgrounds "work" well with a page. The flashy ones distract visitors from the content of the page, the large ones increase download time, and even the subtle and tasteful ones often display in unexpected ways when visitors view them in 16-color mode with the AOL browser or their not-so-new computer. Neutral gray and white backgrounds work well with just about any page content, allowing for more flexibility for other graphic elements on the page, such as headers, buttons, etc.

Use the ALT tag with images, especially menu buttons, to specify alternate text so that the page is still usable by those who have images "turned off" or are browsing with a text-only browser.
example: <IMG SRC="/buttons/reply.gif" ALT="Reply">

Avoid overusing the "bells and whistles." Attributes such as centering, text colors, boldface, italics, etc. can be overused, creating visual confusion which detracts from the page's effectiveness. Flashing text is very distracting and is rarely used effectively.

Avoid overusing graphics. Every graphic adds visual complexity and download time to the page.

Think of the audience. Clear, well-organized content, as in a paper publication, will make it easier for your audience to find and retrieve the information they want.

Relate your pages. If you have more than one web page, relate them by using common graphic elements or common text formatting.

Avoid using the construction sign or saying "This Page is Under Construction." All web pages are constantly "under construction" and evolving; it's the nature of the medium.

Don't hesitate to ask for technical or design advice if you need it. If you want help, or even just a second opinion, feel free to email the URL for your page-in-progress to Ron Meldrum (rmeldrum@bates.edu) or Tammy Roy Caron (tcaron@bates.edu). We'll take a look at it and get back to you with our advice.