UCC Web Site Owner's Guide

5.1. General approach

• Information on the web server is publicly identifiable with UCC. The content, tone, and accuracy of the information SHOULD therefore be appropriate, as well as its appearance: the world outside will judge us on what they see and read. In particular the spelling and grammar on a university site are expected to be correct. To check the Flesch Index for your files (a measure of readability) download and install Bullfighter.

• Writing for a hypertext environment (the web) is not the same as writing for paper publication. Official but unnatural phrases and formulations which are appropriate to a formal paper document are out of place on the web, both because they don't ‘read’ well in an interactive environment and because they do not allow the document to be indexed effectively for searching (users won't know the special words to look for). Use plain English or Irish (or whatever language is appropriate) and avoid officialese.

• Please keep your information accurate and up to date. Information which is found to be misleading or outdated may have to be removed without notice or the site taken offline in order to protect UCC. This applies especially to the use of the title and meta header elements (see section 4.7.1, ‘Making yourself findable’ and the penultimate paragraph in section 3.1 ‘Basic principles’ ).

• Illegal, offensive, damaging, or otherwise actionable material is forbidden by the UCC Acceptable Use Policy.

• Web site owners MUST take full responsibility for the creation, editing, and deletion of their own information. IT Services provides the web service and can help with training and advice, but does not have the resources to write your pages for you.

• You SHOULD take steps to provide for the continuity of your information: the web server is a long-term UCC resource, so if you get someone else to do your pages for you, make sure that if they leave or are absent, you have the ability to take over, or find someone else who can.

• Please do not hog all the disk space by downloading gigabytes of unnecessary files, or storing your thesis or music files online. This is an abuse of UCC's facilities (and in the case of downloaded music files, it may be illegal and leave you open to prosecution).

• The running of an X Window client is not permitted on the web server.

• You SHOULD not create information in a format that cannot be reused in the long term. You can get away with invalid or non-conformant HTML for short-term, ephemeral, trivial, or temporary information, but it is not permitted for pages which are intended for permanent or long-term use because they may need to be converted to another format in the future: remember this is UCC's information, not yours. The next section contains specific advice about what to avoid.

5.2. File formats

• Files in private, proprietary, platform-specific, or manufacturer-specific formats are strongly discouraged because not everyone can view them (the software needed to read them is not available on all computers, and may become obsolete, making your files unusable).

  An exception to this is the use of some proprietary formats for which software is freely available on all common platforms, so you can be reasonably certain that all readers will be able to see your files—for example in an Intranet where the readership and its technology are known or controlled; or in a special-interest or topic group where the readership is self-selected; or where you know that a suitable browser is available for all platforms (such as Adobe's PDF () file format).

• The use of wordprocessor files is discouraged for the same reasons as above.

• The use of auto-converted files from wordprocessor origins is deprecated, because of the very low quality of most conversions when viewed in a browser. The exceptions to this are files in an Intranet where you can control the readers' technology; and files with a very short lifetime.

• Also deprecated are the use of gimmick markup in HTML, and the use of HTML which does not follow one of the public HTML standards. Always check your pages with a validator like the one at http://validator.w3.org/ to see if it makes the grade.

The Webmaster can advise on suitable public file formats for most applications. There are some further technical requirements in section 7, ‘Requirements for site authors and designers’.