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Required and Recommended Procedures

The following steps are highly recommended to produce a smoothly operating web site

 

Of all the recommendation listed below the first two are the most important in maintaining the reliability of your web site. If you do not conform to these standards you will lose links and your site will in all probability not function properly.

1)      DO NOT put spaces between words in a file name.

a)      Use only lowercase letters for your file names.

b)      Use a maximum of 8 letters for your file names.

c)      Use .htm or .html as the extension at the end of each file name.

i)        Example – index.htm

ii)       Example – index.html

2)      Create a Master folder to hold your web pages and an Images folder inside your Master folder to
    hold all images such as clip art, photographs, QuickTime movies, etc. (FrontPage does this automatically.)

3)      Keep each web page below 60K in size

4)      Keep Graphic Images below 33K (2K- 5K preferred) 60K total per page.

5)      Use the same graphics repeatedly for faster download from page to page and also as a design theme
     to keep the site cohesive.

6)      Graphic Tips

a)      Specify Height and Width to insure proper size on browsers

b)      Use GIF files for graphics other than photographs.

c)      Use JPEG files for photographs.

d)      Provide an "Alternate" name for your graphics.

e)      Do not "Dither" your graphics.

f)        Use "Progressive – for JPEG) or "Interlaced – for GIF" loading of large graphic files.
      Not necessary for small graphic files.

g)      If you have a lot of graphics or very large graphic file sizes you should create thumbnails to
    allow previews to be loaded quickly.

h)      Use "movies" and "animations" sparingly. They slow down the loading of your site and may
     turn off visitors. It is advisable to make movies "clickable" so that they only load upon request.

i)        There are several advanced forms of graphics. Among these are Shockwave and QuickTime.
     These are forms of "streaming" video that allows the "movie" to show as it is loading.

7)      Avoid Sound unless it actually "serves a purpose" for your site.

8)      Learn the basics of HTML code for troubleshooting purposes.

9)      Learn how to use an FTP program such as Fetch for the Macintosh and WS-FTP for Windows.