University Web Services
Best Practices
Resources
The following is by no means exhaustive, but I've tried to include at least a few references for each area of this document. In general, if you find a resource you think should be here, please email me with the url. If I agree, I'll add it. I want to keep the list focused, so I've arbitrarily limited each section to a maximum of five references. If you want more, a web search will return many thousands.
Boise State Policy Manual
Note: These links are provided as a convenience only and are not to be taken as a complete and definitive list of relevant policies.
- Information Technology Resource Use
- Intellectual Property
- Anti-Harassment
- Employee Records
- Emeritus Faculty
- Student Records
- Students with Disabilities, Accommodation
- University Records and Archives
- Software Patch Management
- Server Administration
HTML Coding
- HTML5
- Draft of the new HTML5 spec, released December 2008. Documentation from the W3 is highly technical, but if you want the Official Word, this is the place.
- XHTML1.1
- Same as above, but for XHTML.
- http://www.w3schools.com/css/
- A reasonably good tutorial from W3Schools. Somewhat dated.
- http://www.htmldog.com/reference/cssproperties/
- Good reference material here, but elsewhere at the site are some tutorials as well.
- http://meyerweb.com/eric/css/
- Eric Meyer is one of the people who wrote the spec. His website is a good example of what can be done with CSS.
- http://css-discuss.incutio.com/
- CSS-discuss is the best discussion list for stylesheets. This wiki holds the collective wisdom of that ongoing dialog.
- CSS at W3C
- This is the official word on stylesheets.
Writing Content
- Introduction to Hypertext Writing Style
- By Christopher B. Daly. An excellent article that speaks specifically to writing in a hypertexted environment.
- Writing Effective Content
- By Daniel Will-Harris. As with most such articles, it's oriented toward commercial sites, but his points are good ones.
- Writing for the Web
- An article that is mostly general advice, but at least the examples are in a higher ed context.
- Wikipedia Guide to writing better articles
- This is about writing for Wikipedia, but it contains some very good information on writing for the web generally.
- The Elements of Style
- A classic. Only the original, 1918 version is out of copyright, but it contains more good sense per paragraph than most any work in existence. For even better guidance, go buy the version updated by E.B. White.
- University Web Pages and Electronic Publications
- Boise State Policy Manual
Design
Multimedia
Scripts and Databases
Accessibility
- Web Accessibility in Mind
- WebAIM is probably the best single starting point for people who are serious about making their websites accessible.
- Web Accessibility Initiative
- The WAI is the closest thing to an official web accessibility site, because it's run by the World Wide Web Consortium, the W3C. This is the Quick Reference guide to WCAG 2.0, which is the standard to which Boise State adheres.
- Americans with Disabilities Act
- Usually called ADA. You will find the Federal regulation here but will also find a number of other resources regarding accessibility.
- Section 508 of the Vocational Rehabilitation Act
- Same as for ADA. Both these pieces of regulation together outline what is required.
- Telecommunications Act of 1996
- The Telecomm Act more explicitly states that the ADA and VocRehab requirements also apply to electronic communications media.
- State Web Publishing Policy
- This Policy is where the State of Idaho explicitly states that state agencies are required to comply with the Federal regulations regarding accessibility.
- Cynthia Says
- This is our recommended source for checking accessibility.