Web Standards

Guiding Principles
Valencia Community College recognizes the value of publishing on the World Wide Web (WWW) and encourages the development of WWW content that supports the mission of the college and approved strategic planning directions.

The quality of information published by the college plays an important role in presenting the college to the community and maintaining its reputation and image as a major educational institution in the Orlando area. This document sets forth minimum standards that are meant to ensure that information published electronically is visually appealing, well-written and follows the same high standards as other forms of published information. The standards are necessary to give the Valencia Web site uniformity so it represents one institution, while at the same time allowing the site to be both interesting and an expression of our multiple initiatives.

The Valencia “Look & Feel”
The look of the Valencia Web site has been designed with the end user in mind. It is easy to navigate to find what you need quickly. If your area were to stray from this look & feel, you could confuse the user and they may think that they are not at a Valencia site at first glance. Then they could think your web area is out of date. We want to keep the Valencia web areas consistent in their look & layout so the user gets used to the interface and gets comfortable enough to easily find their way around to the information they need.

For the navigation, we have four key areas present in each web area that have links to get to other areas and areas within your web. They are the header, the footer, the breadcrumbs and the local navigation. Some sites may have a sub-local navigation due to deeper levels of information in that area.

The header is at the top of every page and has links to the main areas of the Valencia site: the homepage, the students page, the faculty & staff page, the alumni & friends page and the about us page. These pages are key pages that act as directory listings with links to related areas of the Valencia web site. The header also has support links for added usability.

Styles & Colors
Occasionally the Valencia Web site styles and colors are updated to keep the site fresh and new. These changes are implemented site wide so every page changes at the same time. To ensure that your site is updated with the rest of the site, you can use the styles that are included in every page. You can also utilize the Web servces or Marketing departments for custom graphics when needed.

Web Site Statistics / Page Counters
Valencia uses a stats program called SmarterStats. SmarterStats is a powerful and easy-to-use web site analysis solution. In order to view the stats on your area of the Valencia Web site you must call us and request a report. Once your reports are generated you will be emailed your reports. These reports are generated weekly & monthly for the life of your site or until you tell us to take it down.

Valencia does not use page counters. We insist on back end stats to keep the front end professional.

Valencia Search Engine
To help your placement in the Valencia search engine, your page title and heading at the top of your page play an important role in finding your page. Be sure all of your pages in your Web site have the appropriate title. The page heading can repeat the page title or be more specific. Please send us keywords that will help users find your site. We will place them in the back-end code of your page.

Campus Web Sites - East, West, Osceola and Winter Park
Campus sites should have a reference to their campus on every page of each department site so the user can easily see which campus the deparment belongs. The front page of the campus site should drill down to their own internal departments before linking back to college-wide pages.

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