University of North Texas
Web Publishing Guidelines

 May 9, 2000 

The University of North Texas’ Web Publishing Policy (Policy #3.9) (http://www.unt.edu/irc/policy/webpubr.htm) provides rules governing the creation, maintenance, and content of World Wide Web sites at the University. The Web Publishing Guidelines in this document provide assistance in interpreting the University's and State of Texas' web publishing policies. The Guidelines highlight some of the more important and/or most frequently overlooked design issues.

 For the rules governing the creation, maintenance, and content of World Wide Web sites [defined as state publications under Texas code Title 13, chapter 3, section 3.1,] consult the University of North Texas Web Publishing Policy.

 1.      Identify your home page with the university wordmark.

The University’s wordmark provides continuity and cohesiveness to the myriad of Web sites on campus as well as a visual indication to site visitors that they are still at UNT.  The University’s Publication policy, edited to apply to the Web, can be found at http://www.unt.edu/images/webwordmark.htm. It details how the wordmark may be used in print publications, but most of the rules there are applicable to the Web as well.

Each home page or major entry point into a Web site on campus must indicate the university's name in the wordmark format (note that there is a distinction between the wordmark and spirit marks: only the wordmark is required). Various sizes and styles of the wordmark image are located at  http://www.unt.edu/images/ and you may either link to those images or copy and re-size one of them onto your pages. Preserve the proportions of any wordmark image you re-size, (i.e., keep the same relationship between the height and width of the image).

 2.      Include contact information on your home page.

Many visitors to your site are looking for the names and addresses of persons to whom they can call or write, or come to campus to talk.  Therefore, you should include the following on your home page:

A.     The name of the person in your department who can answer questions about information found on the Web site.

B.     The phone number of the contact person.

C.     The physical address of your department (your building and office number, etc.).

D.    The mailing address of your department if it’s different from the physical address.

E.     The e-mail address of someone who will respond to questions about your Web site (and be sure that someone at that address checks for messages frequently)!

 3.      Review the information on your Web site regularly and date each page to show when it was created, updated, or reviewed.

The Web publishing policy requires that “Owners [of information on the site] must routinely review the official information placed on the Web by their staff to ensure its timeliness and accuracy.” The frequency with which you should review the content will vary by the type of information it contains, but remember that users expect to find recent, correct information about the University on our Web site. Putting the date on the page tells them when the site was last updated so they have some indication whether to trust the information or not.

Spell out the date (i.e., Last updated/reviewed on April 20, 2000) while the United States uses month/day/year, the rest of the world uses day/month/year so it is best to spell out the date to avoid confusion.

Check the spelling and grammar on all material before you publish it on the Web -poor spelling and bad grammar give a very negative impression of an educational institution!

4.      Include internal navigation links on your pages.

Some people might go directly to a page on your Web site through a Web search or by following links from off campus, so you should make it easy for them to find additional information about your department or the university. Departmental home pages must link to the UNT home page (http://www.unt.edu). All other pages should have links that take the user back to the departmental home page or to UNT's home page. You should also consider linking to UNT’s site search page (http://www.unt.edu/search) so that users can easily search within the UNT site for additional information. 

5.      Design your page for accessibility.

State and Federal regulations require that Web pages comply with certain accessibility standards.  The State has Web Accessibility Guidelines at http://www.dir.state.tx.us/standards/srrpub11.htm that are very helpful in assuring that your pages serve all visitors to your site. Look at that site for specific requirements, but some of the key points that you should consider to assure accessibility are:

  1. Avoid the use of frames unless you are an advanced designer who can assure no priority 1 or 2 accessibility errors (see the site above for definitions of these terms) occur when persons with visual impairments use your site. Although there are some instances where the use of frames is necessary, usually frames are used to provide consistent navigation and provide a framework for the site.

Several alternatives to frames provide consistent navigation without decreasing the usability of the site. Up-to-date information on such alternatives can be found on UNT’s Web site at http://www.unt.edu/untdesign.

  1. Keep the load time for your pages short, generally less than 20 seconds using a 28.8 Kbps modem (and remember that images contribute to the download time of your pages, and that images can be large files).
  2. Assign alt tags to all images, including images such as horizontal lines, graphical bullets, image maps, and hot spots.  The alt tags should describe the content of the graphic, but if the images don’t convey content, simply use a “null tag” (“alt = “ “). Otherwise the images will cause confusion with speech readers.
  3. If you post document image files (such as Adobe PDF files) to your site, you must also provide accessible versions of those same pages that will work with screen readers (a few document types are exempt from this state rule – see TAC 201.12.b.1.C.)  Provide a link on your pages to the site where users can obtain free copies of the software needed to view the document image files.
  4. If you require the use of special plug-ins to browsers that defeat the functionality of screen readers (a current example of such a plug-in is “Flash”), provide an alternate way of obtaining the information, such as plain text.

6.      Link to the university's affirmative action, equal opportunity employer and Americans with Disabilities statement or abbreviation (AA/EOE/ADA) from each college or department home page.

The statement can be found at http://www.unt.edu/aaeoeada.html. 

7.      Add required metatags to each page.

The state rules require that every page considered to be a state publication under the law, which includes most UNT pages, have four tags added to enhance their retrievability:

  1. Title – page topic or subject (if you have a standard title tag for your page already, you don’t need to duplicate it as a metatag).

  2.  Description – brief description of the subjects covered.

  3. Keywords – topic words specific to the page subject, not to exceed 25 words

  4. Author – including “State of Texas” and “University of North Texas”, and your department’s name if appropriate.

 8.      If you collect data about the visitors to your site (including logging hits), the State of Texas policy requires that you include a privacy statement on your home page as well as on each page where you collect information from visitors (especially forms). You must also be sure to protect the security of any sensitive data you collect.

Sample privacy statements for various situations can be found at http://www.unt.edu/privacy.html.

If you’re collecting sensitive data (such as the visitor’s social security account number) from a Web form, you must employ either SSL or equivalent technology to encrypt the data (talk to the Web support office if you are unsure about the appropriate technology).