FCPS Class Web Pages

 Guidelines for Class Web Pages

Purpose:  A classroom website is intended to communicate class and school-related information to parents, students and the community-at-large. While the website should be attractive and interesting, its main purpose is that of communication and, therefore, must be easy to navigate and contain up-to-date information.

ALL teacher websites must be located on http://staff.fcps.net/  We have absolutely no control over a class website, which is housed on an outside server. There are daily occurrences of websites being taken over and replaced with inappropriate material. Therefore, we attempt to limit that possibility by housing all our classroom websites on our own servers, over which we have full control. 

Teachers, please note:  

• Students are not allowed to edit live on any FCPS website. 

• Only those graphics and/or files which are linked directly from the web pages may be in folders on the website. A teacher website is not to be used as storage space for graphics and files that are not linked to.

• Learn copyright laws. Just because a website contains, for instance, a graphic which it says is free does not mean that graphic is not copyrighted by someone else. Make sure before you use it.

• Do not publish a copyright on your class website. Class websites are for educational purposes and, therefore, are not to be copyrighted.

• Do not share your teacher password with anyone. Be aware of the AUP you signed as an employee of FCPS.

• A permission form (English or Spanish) must be signed by parents before a child's photo and/or school project may be displayed on a school web page.

• Open your web only through FrontPage when you want to edit and/or create pages. Follow these directions when logging onto your class website.

• After you have completed your web pages, please contact your school webmaster and ask that your web pages be linked from your school staff directory.

A teacher's virtual class may contain such information as:

Content you should have on your class website:

• Place a "Last Updated" notation on your home page. 

• Link to your school website. 

• Link to the FCPS district site --  http://www.fcps.net

• Provide navigation links on every page of your website.

• Do not change the file name of your home page. Home page must be named either default.htm or index.htm

Content Guidelines:

• Keep the design of the website consistent:

Choose 2-3 colors for your pages and use those throughout.

Keep the same navigation structure throughout. (FrontPage provides shared borders.)

White backgrounds have become the accepted norm -- easier to read

• Consider using a Home logo in the upper left-hand corner of every page.

• Use tables for great-looking and functional layout -- provides control over the placement of page elements.

• Follow the "three click rule" -- every page on the site should be accessible with less than 3 clicks from the home page.

• Use graphics sparingly -- graphics cause pages to download more slowly.

• Avoid animated graphics. 

• Do not underline words on the pages. (To the web user, underlined words look like hyperlinks and are confusing.)

• Stick to the most common fonts found on most computers:  Times New Roman, Arial, and Courier New. You can also use Verdana, Comic Sans, Georgia and Tahoma.

• Do not use "Under Construction" pages -- don't link to a page until it is ready to be viewed.

• When using an image to indicate "New" information, use the Scheduled Picture component in FrontPage to ensure the "New" indicator goes away in time. (30 days is a good time frame and FrontPage uses this as the default for a scheduled picture.)

• Avoid changing the default hyperlink colors -- web users are used to seeing links in the default colors of blue and purple.

• Verify all hyperlinks on the website.

• Specify the size of images -- speeds up rendering in the browser and ensures that the page will format correctly if for any reason the image fails to download.

To specify size in FrontPage: right click on the image, choose Picture Properties, Appearance, and Specify Size. The image size in pixels will already be there, so there is no need to change the numbers.

• Include Alternate Text for images -- makes navigation easier for people with text-only browsers, slow connections and vision impairments.

Right click the graphic, choose Picture Properties, General tab. Under Alternative representations in the Text box, type the ALT text for the graphic.

• Avoid use of a hit counter

• Avoid use of adding an extra space after sentences.

• Use the Spell Checker. (In FrontPage, choose Tools, Page Options, General, check the box "Check spelling as you type.")

• Give the website a trial run -- check navigation, hyperlinks, etc.

• Use white space -- adds to design of the page.
  

TIPS:

Page titles and file names have different functions and different formats:

• A page title is what appears in the browser when the page is viewed on the internet:

 

A page title is capitalized and has spaces between the words.  It's function is to identify the name of the page.

• A file name is what appears in the Folder List of the website:

A file name, also, appears in the URL of a web page.  Example: A file named homework.htm would appear in a URL as http://staff.fcps.net/jdoe/homework.htm

A file name should NOT be capitalized and should NOT have spaces between the words.  Additionally, since a file name becomes part of a URL, it should be as short as possible.