Define the target "audience":
a. Is the homepage primarily for use within the department, i.e., for faculty members to reach their students? each other?
b. Is the homepage for the use of the entire college community?
c. Is the homepage meant for the use of the world? BUT: Whether it is or not, once the homepage is posted on the Web server, it is accessible by anyone world-wide.
Definitely include on or near the opening page=screen, regardless of the targeted users:
Postal address, telephone and fax number of the department, an e-mail address.
A link to departmental announcements.
The official catalog description, or in abbreviated form, of what the department does:
areas of specialization, majors and/or programs
special assets and resources such as fancy labs or other equipment.
Optional but recommended:
Faculty: name, rank, area of specialization, office, tel., e-mail address.
Optional but not recommended as it requires frequent updating:
Current schedule of courses. Rooms. Office hours.
Strongly recommended:
Links to Internet resources related to the various departmental specializations.
Start by searching Yahoo, try various sites, add them to your lists of links if appropriate.
See also my page on searching.
Definitely link all of your pages to one another.
The user must be able to go up, down, sideways. Step by step, and skip by skip, and jump by jump.
WHAT TO AVOID:
1. Keep in mind that your homepage is readable by the world. So make it good, error-free, typo-free. Don't say anything that compromises good advertising.
2. Keep in mind that Lehman C. students have VAX accounts. The VAX uses Lynx, a text-based browser. So don't base your pages on graphics.
3. Keep in mind that many of us access the Internet from home, possibly with slow computers and slow modems. So make each one of your pages small, i.e., under 5 K for the text. This can be done by breaking the information down into small sections, with each section on a different page, and all pages linked intelligently. Also, if you use graphics, limit them to one or two per page and make them small. See Tips on the Use of Graphics on the Internet.
4. Don't reinvent the wheel. A lot of information is already on the Net. Just link to it.
5. Don't have the same link on several pages. Sites move or disappear, and it's hard to keep track.
GRAPHICS:
see Tips on the Use of Graphics on the Internet.
Check out some existing college and department homepages. One get can a good idea of what works and what doesn't. Start here:
my page, The World Lecture Hall, and American university homepages.
What I hate: Waiting forever to load a homepage, to find a bio and photo of each teacher, and nothing else of any interest to me.
What I like: A course homepage, including books, outline, weekly assignments, messages to students. The downside: This requires that every student has an account and links to this course homepage regularly, and that the teacher revises the page on a regular basis, as the need arises.
U. Hoffmann 6/96