Content Recommendations

All college, department, and unit pages on the OSU Web are expected to meet the following criteria.

Banner
All Web pages that are hosted on an Oregon State domain space (oregonstate.edu) are required to use either the orange or black Web banner at the top of the page. This identifies your unit and your site as part of Oregon State University. You also are encouraged to include "Oregon State University" as part of the title of your page.

Titles
Page titles are crucial to your site. The title will be the text for any bookmarks the user makes on your pages. Choose something that will help the reader remember what the page is. In addition, many search engines use the title as a factor in determining how to list the page.

Contact information
Include a contact e-mail link to your visitors can ask questions or make comments to your unit. It is also valuable to have an e-mail link to your webmaster so users can report problems with the site. Be sure you keep these links current.

Copyright
Include a statement on your home page and secondary pages that the site is: Copyright [year] Oregon State University.

Be aware of OSU's copyright policies (http://oregonstate.edu/about/copyright.html) and general information about copyrights (http://oregonstate.edu/admin/printing/copyright/multimedia.htm.)

Disclaimer
A link to the OSU Disclaimer statement should be placed at the bottom of your page. The disclaimer is at http://oregonstate.edu/aw/disclaim.htm. The statement also links to the OSU computing facilities acceptable use policy, copyright center, and affirmative action/equal opportunity statement.

Navigation
Links to the OSU home page and to your unit home page are important. These will give visitors the opportunity to find out more about your department and the university. The OSU banner provides a built-in link to the OSU home page.

If your site consists of multiple pages and invites users to move around and explore, consider using the same links in the navigation area on each page. The common set of navigation elements that appear on every page within a site is called global (or persistent) navigation.

Be sure there is a link to every page you create, and that each page links to one or more other pages so readers can get to the next appropriate site.

Search field
Include a search box on every page. With OSU's search engine, you can allow your readers to limit their search to your site or to search the entire OSU Web.