The following are some good-sense guidelines, not requirements or policies, for sites on the Lawrence University webscape. If you have any questions, please contact the Helpdesk at 832-6570.

Additionally, the personal website information page has policies and requirements pertaining to personal websites. It is a required read, so please do.

Display of long rather than short LU e-mail addresses
For security reasons, never publicly display or provide your short e-mail address. Use the safer, long-name version: john.w.smith@lawrence.edu.
Cloak all non-LU e-mail addresses
Spammer robots traverse the web finding e-mails to spam. We provide protection for our own addresses, but non-LU inboxes are potentially vulnerable. It is highly recommended that you use our e-mail cloak utility to hide unprotected addresses.
Obtain permission for copyrighted materials
There are many misconceptions about "educational" and "fair-use" freedoms with regard to copyrighted material. If you are using another person's work, make sure you have their express permission, or ask the expert, Peter Gilbert.
Obtain permission before posting pictures/recordings of people
It is illegal to display images or recordings of a person without their consent. Most students at Lawrence automatically give permission for University purposes, but some do explicitly require they be consulted. Make sure that the subjects of your picture/etc. are okay with where and how it will be posted to the Internet.
Protect the privacy of others
If a student applies FERPA to their records we are obligated to refrain from making public any record of their attendance at Lawrence, including shift/duty rosters. Even if FERPA has not been requested, it is never good practice to post such information to the Internet. Ensure that these materials are NOT available to off-campus visitors (anything in the /oncampus/ directory will provide this security).
Accessibility is important
(and legally required) The Americans with Disabilities Act requires that public institutions make every reasonable effort to accommodate all visitors to our sites. Some suggestions include:
  • Provide ALTernative text for all images used
  • When writing scripts or styles, the site should be useable with either or both absent/disabled
  • Use text for navigation links whenever possible (instead of image-based links, etc.)
  • Do not use low-contrasting colors for text/navigation (e.g. gray text on black backgrounds)
There are tools and automated checking/evaluation scripts available from the outside links portion of the personal site policy page.
Do not post "under construction" pages
Users typically do not appreciate clicking a link and finding an empty page, or a page with one line that reads, "Under Construction" or "Coming Soon!" It's better to add any links to the page only after some content is available on it. The page can still change after it is linked up.
Resize images in an image editor, not HTML
It's often tempting to simply alter the width and height in your webpage's code without changing the dimensions of the actual image. This "HTML resizing" almost always looks bad, and can break in the web browser. A real picture editing program can resample the image while resizing, creating the best looking result possible.
Consistent navigation is important
Visitors to your sites do not want to get lost while they wander, and expect all pages within a site to operate in similar ways. The navigation should honor this expectation, and provide clear and consistent means of travel throughout the site.