University Web Services

Web Publishing Policy

Required LInks and Page Elements

1. Include a graphical or textual element that identifies "The University of Texas at Dallas"

The full text identifier will let users know they are viewing a university page if they arrive from a search engine or other external link. It should be linked to the university home page at: www.utdallas.edu . If only a graphical element is used, ensure that the ALT attribute for the graphic specifies "The University of Texas at Dallas" (see the Accessibility Guidelines ). Use the fully spelled-out version. Do not use abbreviations. If the university is referenced again, the official abbreviations may be used - U. T. Dallas or UTD. No other abbreviations are permitted. The university seal is not recommended for use on the web.

2. Link to the UTD home page from all pages and link to the school/dept/office home page from all sub-pages in your site.

Include a link to the university home page. At minimum, link the graphical/textual element "The University of Texas at Dallas" to www.utdallas.edu (see requirement 1), and include the official UTD logo, also linked to the university home page, at the bottom right of the page (i.e., in the footer). If the site refers to an entity under the direction of a larger part of the university (i.e., a research lab in the School of Human Development) it should also include a link to the home page of the parent entity . Providing a link to your site homepage on all sub-pages gives users an easy way to "start over." The main areas of a site should be linked to on all pages. Within a sub-area of a site provide links to all parts of the sub-area.

3. Include the date that the page was last modified

This gives users an idea of how current the information is. This can be done manually, or through the use of Server Side Includes (SSI) or with the FrontPage "timestamp" WebBot (Insert menu -> date and time).
The following SSI code will work if you publish your site from apache.utdallas.edu:

This will give the date in the form month day, year. To configure for other formats, look up SSI in any search engine. A good reference site is http://bignosebird.com/sdocs/echo.shtml

4. Include contact information for the page maintainer

This lets users send comments to the appropriate person directly rather than sending it to webdeveloper@utdallas.edu or an office-wide distribution list. Users with problems will send email to whomever they think is responsible for the page. Eliminate confusion and tell them who is. This must at least include a UTD email address. The email can be either the specific email of a person, or a general email such as webdeveloper@utdallas.edu (but not webdeveloper itself - this is the contact for the Web Development Team and the pages it maintains).

5. Name your home page file appropriately for the server you use so that ending a url with a "/" brings up the home page.

This relieves users of the need to remember the name of your home page. On the UNIX server, the default name that results in this behavior is index.html. If you use a local IIS server, check with your server administrator to find out what the default is set to.

6. Use descriptive links, not "click here"

This associates the link with meaningful information. A page full of "click here" links is very confusing, particularly to users with screen readers.
Example:
Bad: For the class syllabus, click here
Good: Test days can be found in the class syllabus