Site Maintenance

A website is unique as a form of media and communication because it allows a user to update information as often as every few seconds if desired.

To take full advantage of this unique feature, proper website maintenance is important.

Some basic rules for proper website maintenance:

Keep your website up to date.
Often this is easier said that done, but if you are involved in a business or academic organization it is extremely important that the information on your website is accurate and current. People increasingly depend on websites to learn about organizations or to find out how to contact someone. Images as well as text signal the last time a site was updated, and outdated sites are quickly disregarded.

Clean Design
So many sites today are cluttered with ads and flashing banners that the visitor's eye tends to ignore peripheral content. If you keep your site simple, clean, and attractive, your visitors will be able to easily access information and enjoy their browsing experience.

Visitors to your site are familiar with the navigation of other pages on the Bryn Mawr site. Keep you site consistent with the standards seen on other Bryn Mawr sites; such as primary navigation on the left and at the top. Always make sure your site is clearly identified as being a part of the college. Web users need to be clued in visually that they are on an official Bryn Mawr page, we do this by inserting the web logo "BRYN MAWR" in the top left, as you can see on this page. We recommend you include the full navigation bar for the convenience of our community.

Accessibility
Many factors are involved in the ultimate effectiveness of a website. If a page is busy or has poor color contrast (such as light gray text on a dark gray background) the viewing experience is not optimal. In addition to these basic considerations, one must consider the audience:

Not everyone has high speed internet, so sites are more effective if they load quickly on everyone's browser. Sites heavy on flash animation or other multimedia features should offer an option without the bells and whistles.

Visitors with vision impairment will need to be able to view your site. Relative text size allows the visitor to determine his/her own text size while maintaining the overall presentation of your page. High contrast between colors also allows for more visible content.

Some people will be using screen reading software, which relies on the text content of a page to describe the experience. If you have images that are significant, or text that is an image, you should have an 'alt' tag that describes the content of the image.

Organization
Is your site easy to navigate? Can the visitor find the information he or she is seeking quickly and directly? These factors are significant in the effectiveness of your webpage.

Consistent site structure and text indicators (i.e. links being a consistent color so that they are easily identified as links) will help the visitor move easily through the site.

Information Architecture
Consider how much content you will have on your site, pages and subpages can be hard to list all in one place or find later with standard navigation. A sitemap is often a handy tool.

A sitemap is an html file that lists all of the webpages on your site in an outline-like format, so that the visitor can see all of the content of your site, listed by section and quickly find the page he or she is looking for.