USF Web Guidelines

It looks like there are some things that you must include on your website if it is hosted by USF. Some things are common sense, others are not. These are:

1. A USF Logo, preferably on the upper left side of your banner, must be on every web page.

2. The logo must link back to the USF home page.

3. Every page must include a link to the USF home page.

4. Every web page must include contact information of the person who manages the site, including a phone number (really??) and email, preferably in the footer of all pages.

5. Users must be able to link from any sub page back to the home page.

6. They recommend that certain things be in the top right of your banner, e.g. a campus directory, but I think I'll skip that. It will start to look like the whole subject of my page is USF.

7. All pages must have meta information for keyword and description.

8. Every page must have author's name and email address in the head, whether meta or not.

9. Pictures must be the correct height and width specifications to allow for quick downloading. (I don't understand that yet.)

10. Make sure you use ALT tags.

11. I just love this part: Features and technologies that are browser specific can be used in a "sanitary fashion." Ha.

12. Frames are strongly discouraged. I don't know what a frame is yet.

Now I'm reading about how to use HTML meta tags. All USF web pages must have them for keywords and descriptions. See http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=2167931#Example%201



Meta tags give you some degree of control as to how your webpage is described by search engines. Inserted into the head area of your page, they communicate information not on the page itself, such as what character set the browser should use.



New phrase: Reverse bar: At the very top of the screen it's the blue bar. This one has in it Blogger: Instructional Graphics - Create Post - Windows Internet Explorer. Whatever info you place in between the title tags will show up there. (Title tags are not meta tags.) The text you use in your title tag will be what shows up when crawlers show your listing. The text will also show up in bookmarks.



Back to meta tags:

http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">

Above is my practice using the meta description tag. (Oh, never mind. It won't let me show you.) Some crawlers will support this. Google will make up its own. Some people just make this tag the first few sentences of their body copy.

Most crawler ignore the meta keyword tag. However, if you use the word, e.g. see above, "teen lounge" in the meta keyword and in the body, your page might be boosted. Unfortunately, with a word like "storytime," the only way to boost the page for "story time" is to put both in the meta keyword and use both representations in the body as well. Sloppy looking. Anyway, don't obsess over the meta keyword tag. There is a BIG MAYBE as to whether using it will actually help your ranking.

A meta robots tag will ensure that your page is NOT indexed.