Resources

Web Standards & Guidelines

In order to achieve the Library's goal of establishing a consistent branding identity and uniform style for all Library Web sites, and to promote compliance with guidelines for accessibility, the following standards for development, design, technical specifications, and content should be followed for all Library Web sites.

Development | Design | Technical | Content

Development Standards

First considerations

Is your site for public use, or a resource for Library staff?
If your site is to be accessed by the general public, then it ultimately belongs in a directory on the main Library Web server (www.lib.virginia.edu). If, however, your site is to serve as a resource for Library staff, it belongs in the STAFF section of the Web tree (staff.lib.virginia.edu), which is protected from indexing by search engine bots & spiders.

If you need to present both public information and staff-only information, then you actually need two sites -- a public site on the main Library Web server (lib.virginia.edu) and a staff site on the staff Web server (staff.virginia.edu). These sites must not have links to each other.

The reason for this is simple: our staff site provides access to internal documents -- committee minutes, working documents, account information, etc. -- which should not be available to the public. Any public Web page that has a link to a staff page makes our internal information accessible to anyone.

In some instances it may mean certain information gets presented in both public and staff Web pages, but maintenance of duplicate content can be simplified by proper use of Server-Side Includes or more advanced server tricks. Contact us for assistance.

Develop on a test server
Web sites under construction or being converted to a new design should not be accessible to the public or to web indexing "spiders." We maintain a test server specifically for development purposes: test.lib.virginia.edu/. Sites developed on this server are fully functional for testing purposes. And if built using root-relative pathnames and the same directory structure they will have on the live server (viva), completed site content can be migrated to the live server without further change. Contact Communications for assistance in setting up your development directory.

Prevent Info-sprawl: Plan for growth
Good site development principles include organizing the files on a Web server in a way that makes sense and allows for systematic growth. Think about how your new content fits into the structure of the current Web site. Does it fit into an established category of information? If so, arrange to have the files or directories integrated into the existing info architecture, rather than scattering files and directories throughout the root directory.

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Best Practices: Building with Web Standards

Library web sites should adhere to "Web Standards" — a cluster of W3C recommendations and best practices representing a major leap forward in Web design & development strategies, and a significant change in the way we build and present Web sites.

The Standards-based approach involves the complete separation of content from design by means of two technical standards -- XHTML (eXtensible HTML) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets):

simple, bare-bones content -- NO LAYOUT, NO STYLING -- marked up using…
valid XHTML that reflects the document structure (headers, paragraphs, lists, elements with structurally meaningful ID tags, etc.)
visual presentation (layout, design, styling) controlled by external cascading style sheets (CSS)

The benefits of this approach are significant:

device independence: content accessible to more people and more types of Internet devices
forward-compatibility: long-term viability of content -- sites continue to function correctly as browsers evolve, and as new Internet devices come to market
cost-effective designs & re-designs
60% smaller files load quicker, require less storage & bandwidth
accessibility compliance
easy maintenance

Continue to "Technical Standards: XHTMl & CSS"»

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