Important Quality Review Tips

As described in our step by step guide to creating a campus website, every CSUSM website is subject to a quality review before the site can be published to the live server. Our complete Web Guidelines Document (Adobe PDF) provides a detailed description of all standards that must be met. However, this page provides a brief summary of some of the most important standards:

Use a common header on every page

Each page on your website should start with the same header style. Internal headers for subsections should also be uniform. As long as you choose one and are consistent, your pages will flow well.

Do not center your text

Your site will be easier to read if all your text is set as left justified (which is the default setting in Cascade). If there isn't much content on a certain page and you feel it looks odd, there are other things you can do to 'spruce up' the look of your page:

  • Consider using a title graphic on that page
  • Try using an image within the content
  • Reformat the text in a way that flows better (eg: using tables for data, bulleted lists, etc.)

Tables

Use the new table styles to make them look even better!

In filenames: NO SPACES! NO CAPS!

This is very important and cannot be stressed enough. Spaces in filenames cause many issues. Try keeping all your filenames short, concise, with no spaces. This goes for any filetype on your website be it a Word doc, Excel file, Web page, PDF, image, or anything in between. If you need to have spaces for a more descriptive filename (usually for a download like a PDF document), consider an underscore or dash.

Uppercase text also causes issues. Our Web server is case sensitive. This means, if you send a link to someone, they will need to make sure that they type it with the exact uppercase/lowercase characters — otherwise it will not load. If you are consistent and keep all your filenames lowercase, you prevent this issue from happening.

Finally, do not use dots in the middle of your filenames. This can cause the same issues as spaces.

Examples:

October 2008 Directors Meeting Agenda FINAL.doc
oct08dirmeeting.doc
On the web, we don't need to know it's the 'Final' version. We can condense the characters as well.

Jason.Eberwein.pic.08.jpg
jasoneberwein.jpg
We know it's a pic because of the file extension. The extra dots are not needed.

Keep it short and simple

If your page contains too much content, people wont read it. Try to be as concise as possible. Avoid long, essay-like passages. Instead, create shorter sentences and paragraphs.

Break up your information into smaller segments with contrasting emphasis through the use of headings, bulleted lists, etc.

Check your links and pages

Before requesting your site quality review, publish your page to www-dev.csusm.edu. Go to your site and see it on the server (http://www-dev.csusm.edu/yourfolder).

Look through every page.

  • Do they flow? (look consistent from one to the next)
  • Does the navigation make sense?
    • Order
    • Items
    • Can anything be condensed into folders?
  • Click every link to make sure they work
  • Is there anything else you can do to make it more understandable by the end-user?