School Web Page Guidelines

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Thinking of putting your School online? Great!

Here is a generic set of "boilerplate" guidelines you will find useful; adapt them as you see fit.

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SCHOOL WEB SITE CONTENT

Site Purpose and Objective

Web pages should enhance current curriculum objectives and be useful for School staff, students, and/or outside visitors as an educational resource.

Subject matter should relate to curriculum, instruction, School-authorized activities, and other appropriate information that is of interest to others.

Basic Restrictions

Neither staff nor students may post personal home pages on the School server, or include links to personal home pages within School pages. (Personal home pages are defined as those which include only personal information, and do not have a specific instructional or School-related informational purpose.)

Web pages may not include information, or link to pages or sites, whose primary purpose is commercial or political advertising.

Although the traditional rules and regulations that have always applied to printed materials created by students or faculty and published by the School also apply to web publishing, web authors are further reminded that the Internet reaches a far larger and more diverse audience. School pages will be accessed by young children, parents, grandparents, alumni, School board officials, and former foreign exchange students and their families around the world. Your pages can and will be viewed by an audience quite different than the one intended; it is important that your pages always represents you ad your School well.

Legal Considerations

All web pages on the School server(s) are the property of <School Name>. Any web page or pages may be removed from the server by the School at any time, and for any reason.

No servers other than the School computer(s) shall be configured or described as School web and/or FTP servers.

Copyrighted information may not be posted without proper permission.

Non-School Content

Although we expect that most student web work will relate to School-related content, it is also anticipated that some extracurricular web projects will involve building pages or sites for worthy outside organizations, such as area not-profits.

Such non-School pages or sites may not be posted on the School server. The responsible Staff member is instead encouraged to have such sites posted within an appropriate community site such as:

* <List alternative hosts such as local libraries, GeoCities, etc.>

Alternatively, most dialup Internet Service Providers (ISPs) offer space in which a limited number of web pages can be posted as part of their basic service.

STUDENT PROTECTION

Student Names

In general, student identification on web pages should consist of only their initials, or only their first name, or their first name and last initial. On the rare occasion when a full name seems appropriate -- for example, for a listing of recipients of special honors or awards -- the written consent of the student's parent or guardian must be obtained.

The author credit in the hidden HTML <META> tag may include a student's first initial and last name.

Student Photos

Photographs of identifiable staff members or students require the express written consent of the individual, and the express written consent of the student's parent or guardian.

Prior to requesting such permission, the certified staff member should first check with the School office to determine if the student's parents or guardians have previously registered their objection to the publication of pictures.

Personal Information and Email

Web pages may not include any information which indicates the physical location of a student at a given time, other than attendance at a particular School, or participation in activities

Personal information about students should never be posted. For example, web pages may not include a student's personal email address, phone number, home address, names of other family members, or names of friends.

Published email addresses are restricted to staff members or to a general department or group email address where arriving email is forwarded to a staff member.

OVERALL SITE DESIGN

As soon as practical, existing School web sites will be divided into two distinct categories: "official" pages and "student/faculty" pages. New sites and pages should be created with this division in mind.

* The official pages will contain content such as category index pages, the Principal's welcome remarks, School rules and regulations, administration contact information and the like.

These are pages that can be expected to remain relatively unchanged over time, and that will have the same style (within each School).

The intent of the official pages is to present information to visiting parents and students in an online environment which is perceived as having been posted "by the School" (as opposed to by a student). These pages are to be visually-related, fast-loading, and compatible with virtually all browsers.

* The student/faculty pages will be built and maintained on a less restrictive basis, and are intended to support individual classes and subjects, clubs, student events and similar activities.

Although the student/faculty maintained pages are also to contain useful information, design requirements will be more flexible. On the one hand, there is no reason for a teacher-posted page of class assignments to comply with high-end design standards that demand graphic embellishments such as background images, School logos and colored headlines. On the other hand, student web designers who wish to learn-by-doing as they experiment with and apply appropriate multimedia "bells and whistles" to their club pages should be encouraged to do so.

These two types of pages may be found anywhere within the site. For example, The Clubs and Organizations directory (folder) may include an official index page and any number of student-built club pages.

Site Organization

Structure. The School Webmaster will distribute a map of School web pages and indicate appropriate and possible areas where new pages can be added. The map will remain flexible as the sites grow and evolve; adjustments and enhancements can be made by mutual agreement between the page author, sponsoring staff member and the School Webmaster.

Every directory (folder) should have an "index.html" page as its main (home) page. The index.html page is the default page that will be loaded when a URL does not specify a file within a directory; i.e. --

schoolname.k12.il.us/

is the same as --

schoolname.k12.il.us/index.html

Each directory should also contain an "images" folder which holds the GIFs and JPGs relating to the pages in that particular directory. Image links may also point to pictures within higher level image files, such as a School logo at the top level, or a departmental logo at a higher department level.

The simplified example below illustrates how the District's "East" School's Ecology Club's pages -- and their accompanying images -- would be posted at the URL of:

www.schoolname.il.us/east/activities/clubs/ecology/

The club's home page is the default, "index.html". Note that there is a home page "index.html" document and "images" folder within each directory.

The index.html document in the next higher directory -- "clubs" -- would be an "official" menu page, listing links to the various club home pages immediately below.

TECHNICAL CONSIDERATIONS

HTML Standardization

All pages must comply with HTML 3.2 as defined by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3). The W3 / HTML 3.2 Home Page is:

http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Wilbur/

It includes links to third-party HTML 3.2 documentation.

Adobe PageMill <or whatever> is the School's preferred "WYSIWYG" web page building / editing software. Although it may be possible to successfully post pages built with other editors, maintaining and updating pages built on a variety of incompatible page editors can lead to major problems down the line. Please contact the webmaster before building pages with anything other than PageMill (or "raw" HTML).

Overall

Page Boilerplate. All pages must included certain standard items, including hidden <META> tags for description, keywords, author, etc.

The boilerplate also includes (at the top of the page) the School name (in logo form), and (at the bottom of each page), links to the department, School and <if applicable> district home pages, plus a concluding <ADDRESS> entry that includes information such as the page URL, type of authorship, and most recent update.

Virtually all other page attributes may be adjusted and adapted to best serve the goals of the author and needs of the audience. It is strongly suggested that all related pages -- i.e., those supporting a particluar curriculum or club -- maintain the same graphic style.

As discussed above, official pages will have a standardized look that is to be different than that of student/faculty-built pages; the style of the latter must not be made to mimic the former.

A printout of the boilerplate is included with this document; a digital version may be obtained from the School Webmaster.

Page Size. Web authors must always remember that a large percentage of "surfers" have neither high-speed modems nor up-to-date browsers. As a rule of thumb, pages take approximately one second per kilobyte to load over a 14.4k modem, i.e., a page consisting of 10k of HTML text plus two 20k images will take about one minute to load at 14.4.

Internal Links. It is critical that all internal links have a proper relative address, i.e., links to other pages on the School server must not be in the form of either an external "http://www.schoolname..." URL, or as a machine-specific address such as "MacintoshHD/documents/file:///..."

PageMill must have its Preferences/Server set properly prior to creating a page.

In General --

* Pages implementing frames must also offer a non-frame alternative (not all browsers can interpret frames)

* The use of blinking text is discouraged except for rare and noteworthy occasions (such as announcing"We Won!" a state championship).

* Images should enhance the intellectual content of the page.

* Multimedia and/or interactive enhancements should be used only when they have inherent intellectual value -- not simply because they are "cool."

* Images larger than approximately 25k should not be presented without warning; instead smaller "thumbnails" should be offered which click-through to the larger pictures.

* GIF images should be reduced to the lowest bit-per-pixel count practical. (A standard "256 colors" GIF can often be reduced to an eight- or 16-bit image with little loss in quality -- resulting in a file that can be less than 1/10 the size of the original.)

GIF images should also use the "Netscape-safe" 216-color pallet to allow for the limited graphic capabilities of many PCs.

* To speed loading, image source tags should always include HEIGHT and WIDTH attributes that are the same as those of the image.

* "ALT="Description"" tags should be included for all images, including "ALT="*"" for bullets; not all can (or will be set to) display images.

* Pagemill must also its Preferences/HTML/Syntax/Allignment set to <CENTER> Tag in order to properly center items in both Netscape Navigator and MS Internet Explorer browsers.

* All pages should be checked for spelling, HTML accuracy, and link functionality before submission. (HTML editors such as BBEdit have built-in HTML validation capabilities; SiteMill and Big Brother are link validators.)

* Web pages may not contain links to pages not yet completed and posted. If additional pages are anticipated, the text that will provide the link may be included, but the actual hot link should be disabled with an "!" (exclamation point) until the final page is posted, e.g.:

<!A HREF="events.html>...

* Whenever possible, pages should be checked in multiple browsers, most noteably Netscape Navigator and MS Explorer.

Feel free to contact the School Webmaster regarding the above or any other page design considerations.

POSTING AND MAINTAINING PAGES

Page Posting

New and or/changed web pages must be submitted (on floppy or zip disk) to the School Webmaster, c/o the School office. Always save a backup copy.

In selected cases submission by email may be acceptable; please check with the webmaster first.

Pages will be accepted only from certified staff (teachers, administrators, certified support staff). Each submission must be accompanied by a signed form (copy attached) which identifies the submitting staff member, the page author, the proposed location(s) for the page(s), and other necessary information.

The certified staff member must also attest that he or she has reviewed the content and found it to be in compliance with these guidelines. Although certified staff members who submit pages are officially responsible for page content, it is also the authors' responsibility to create only appropriate material for the web site. Student authors who attempt to abuse their responsibility will lose their Internet privileges.

The School Webmaster reserves the right to remove or edit content and/or links deemed inaccurate or inappropriate for any reason.

Web pages that do not work will not be edited by the Webmaster. If installed Web pages do not function, they will be removed from the server and the sponsoring staff member notified of the problem.

Maintenance of Pages

It is the page author's responsibility to maintain and update his or her page(s).

Although the School Webmaster will validate all posted internal and external links on a monthly basis, authors are encouraged to notify the webmaster via email of "dead links" and other changes to linked URL's as they are discovered.

Greater changes to a page will generally require the submission of a complete replacement page which includes the revision, although exceptions can be negotiated with the School Webmaster on a case-by-case basis.

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