Advice and Tips to Get You Started

Choose your tools: Tools that you use to develop a web site are very important. A readily available tool is Front Page which is part of Microsoft Office and is most likely already installed on your computer. Even though Front Page has the ability to design a web page through a "What You See, What You Get" environment, we would suggest only using the "HTML Editor" feature of Front Page. It is not recommended to use Front Page's website management features, such as shared borders, navigation feature and themes, as they do not meet the requirements of Section 508. If you plan on creating graphics or using clipart, be sure the clipart and images are copyright free. You should spend time on learning your tools prior to starting development on the web site. Your Account Representative can offer some support but we strongly suggest training through an outside source.

Take Baby Steps: First, concentrate on your website's content to assure that it is clear and accurate. This is a very important component that can delay the website's launch if content is not planned and/or developed properly.

Think in Phases: A good practice to start with is an outline or overview of the objects of your web site. Then prioritize the most required information to the least. In order to get your website launched in a timely manner, you may want to divide the website development project into manageable phases. It's much easier and more effective to "upgrade" an existing site then it is to tackle a large development project all at once.

Keep it Simple: Always make sure that accessing every web page is easy and that people browsing your site will not get lost. Remember, it's supposed to be a user-friendly source to share information. It is suggested that information should be able to be available within two clicks.

Be Consistent: Graphic and layout consistency helps the user navigate through your website and provides a cohesive presentation. It can be very confusing to people browsing your website if every page looks completely different.

Keep Web Pages short: Research has found that most people browsing the web will not scroll down further then 3 screen lengths. Therefore, it is much more effective to divide your information into smaller sections and to put each section on a separate web page.

Avoid "Hidden" hyperlinks: Make sure all hyperlinks are easily accessed and placed in a prominent location within your web pages. Don't place hyperlinks at the bottom of web pages since this location is often overlooked.

Bigger is not better. Avoid large images since these contain large file sizes and will add considerably to the web page's download time - very few people will wait, even for 1 minute, for your web page to download.

Don't use Textured Backgrounds or Animated Graphics: Stick to a white as a background color. Using a textured background makes reading text very hard and is another element that gives people headaches. A lot of moving elements on a web page tend give people headaches.

Avoid Image Maps: Image maps should be avoided for two reasons; 1) image maps tend to be larger and, therefore, adds considerably to the web page's download time, 2) since browsers cannot "read" an images content, any navigational or text information embedded in an image will be unreadable for people with vision impairments, as well as, for people who have turned off the image rendering capability on their browser.