Standards and Policies
UW-Eau Claire Web Style Guide
Why a Style Guide
Required Page Format Elements
Accessibility Requirements
Tips for Well-Designed Web Pages
Why a Style Guide?
This guide was developed to assist UW-Eau Claire Web publishers meet minimum standards for Web publishing. Your individual web pages represent a unique part of our campus, yet collectively combine with those in other units to create one UW-Eau Claire Web. Users appreciate predictability and structure when browsing a Web site. Having some common elements helps accomplish this.
Minimal style standards are required for department, office and other "official" Web sites and student organization Web sites. There are no requirements for People pages for staff and students; however, many of the standards found in this document represent sound practices that are equally applicable to any Web materials. Before a site is linked in the A-Z list of the UW-Eau Claire Web site, it is scanned for requirements.
A department/office/organization home page is the first page entrance to our Web site for academic departments, administrative offices and student organizations. They typically contain descriptions of the site and links to supporting pages, curricular pages and related information. Supporting pages are all documents that are linked from the department/office/organization home page.
As you are creating Web documents, it is important to remember that your site reflects on the reputation of this university. Every effort was made to balance creativity in Web publishing with the need for consistent elements in order to maintain a professional, cohesive look and feel.
This document is a work in progress; one that will continue to evolve as our needs evolve and as the Web itself causes us to rethink the way we publish our information. If you have comments or suggestions, please contact the UW-Eau Claire Web Coordinator.
Required Page Format Elements
All new department/office or other "official" Web sites use a Dreamweaver template that is set up when a site is created or updated. This template incorporates the style requirements. This section describes required formatting elements and the rationale for all sites not using the Dreamweaver templates, including student organizations.
Header and Title
A header area at the top of a home page and all supporting pages should be used to identify both the university and the department/office/organization in addition to describing the content of the site. This is because people may arrive at any page without passing through the home page or any other previous page. This can be done by using HTML text or graphical text.
The home page is a special case and is described next under "Wordmarks".
It is also important to identify the site's location in the title because the title is used as a bookmark and is used in indexing. The title is specified in the <HEAD> section of a page's code and displayed at the top of the browser. The title for this page reads "UW-Eau Claire WebDev Tools - Web Style Guide". Due to title space limitations, it may be necessary to shorten the reference to the university to 'UW-Eau Claire'. (Note: The use of the acronym UWEC or UW-EC is discouraged because it may not be immediately recognizable to those outside the university.)
Wordmarks
Shown directly above is an example of one of the UW-Eau Claire wordmark graphics. It has been developed as an identity tool to let readers know without a doubt the site they are at. See the UW-Eau Claire Web graphics page for code to use to produce the image as well as for additional choices. All department/office/organization home pages must use one of these graphics or create a custom banner by incorporating one of the wordmark graphics provided. Use of the wordmark graphic on supporting pages is encouraged.
Return Links
Displayed above is a graphic link that returns to the UW-Eau Claire home page. See the UW-Eau Claire Web graphics page for code to use to produce the image. This graphic, or an equivalent text link, must be used for department/office/organization home pages, typically at the bottom of the page. The reason for its use is to give people a way to the top of our Web site in case they wish to use the site search feature, or find other related information about UW-Eau Claire. Our site is a great recruitment tool for students, faculty and staff!
On supporting pages, it is good practice to create a link back to the appropriate department/office/organization home page as well as the UW-Eau Claire home page.
Identification(ID) Block
An ID Block at the bottom of a page is used to provide a way for people to direct their comments and questions to the appropriate person (Page Contact) and to indicate the document's age (Update Date). This enhances the document's usefulness and validity. This is a requirement for Department/Office/Organization and Supporting pages, but is highly recommended for all pages.
Page Contact
The page contact should include a contact name (person and/or department/office/organization) and/or communication method (Internet email address, telephone number including area code and/or snail mail address).
Update Date
The update date is the date the information was last modified. It should appear in the Month, Numeric Day, Full Numeric Year format to avoid confusion with international date formats.
For example:
Comments: web@uwec.edu
Updated: July 1, 2004
Accessibility Requirements
As a public institution of higher learning, we are are required to take appropriate steps to ensure that our public Web sites are universally accessible by all persons, including those without access to high speed Internet connections, those who do not have the latest computer technology, and those persons using special technology such as screen readers for the sight impaired. Please check out our section on Accessible Web Pages for more information on how your pages can satisfy this requirement.
Tips for Well-Designed Web Pages
These tips are a collection of recommendations related to accuracy, HTML coding, testing, graphics, and more. Please examine this document. It contains a lot of useful information!
