Download the Chapman
Graphic Standards,
Guidelines and Policies PDF

Website Publication Guidelines

How To Guides

When creating new pages for the Chapman website, using the standard templates and ActiveCampus CMS Console, please refer to the information in the following:

Creating and editing pages using ActiveCampus CMS Console
This MS Word document has screenshots and descriptions of all the steps you will go through to create, edit or submit a webpage using the ActiveCampus Content Management System (CMS) Console.  If you have specific questions please contact Mandy Thomas, webmaster, at mthomas@chapman.edu.

 Accessibility Guidelines
These are guidelines to follow in making the content you add to your webpage be accessible to disabled users of the website.

Chapman Standards

Text and Headings

1. Each page should have a text "Heading" in an H1 size that is a short descriptive of your page. It should be black, gray or maroon.
2. Sections of information down the page should also be prececed by "Headings" to clearly tell the visitor what's found in that part of the page. They should go in order if they are nested, for example, Major sections should all use an H2 heading tag and sub-topics within that section should have an H3 then H4 tag etc. (This page you're viewing is an example of this technique). Using the built-in Heading options in the first dropdown in the menu bar of the editor is preferable over you simply using font sizes to make headings larger or smaller. Headings used properly will aid search engines and special-purpose browsers used by disabled visitors.
3. Don't set any font styles or sizes except to choose heading sizes from the drop-down menu. This will allow the site-wide stylesheets to set the same font style and size for all pages, giving the entire site some uniformity.
4. If you're copying content from a WORD document into your webpage we strongly recommend you copy it into Notepad software first to remove MS Word formatting, then copy and paste it again into your new webpage. You will need to add back in bolding, headings, italics and links etc. MS WORD puts a lot of extraneous html in the document and you will copy it into the new webpage. that html will override the stylesheets and in many cases, make your page slow to load.
5. Each page must have a TITLE (step 5 in the console) that gives a brief, self-contained description of the page. A good example is "Law - Registrar - Contact Us".

Images

1. ALL images (photos, graphic headers, even the small red arrow graphics) must have a a value in the ALT parameter of the IMG tag. No exceptions. This provides alternative text describing the graphic. It is the text you see if you hover over an image on the webpage and is of great value to disabled visitors using our website.
2. Graphics on the page should not be used as main navigation to other parts of your website or the page will not be accessible to all users. Provide text alternatives, ALT tags in the image tag, or use graphics as decoration only.
3. If you add a photo or image underneath the links in the left-side Navigation area, it should be either a "cutaway" (no background, floating on white) or a rectangular banner ad (172 pixels wide maximum). Don't use that area as additional content, it's really only for navigation or small features.
4. Use the images from the Shared Media library whenever possible rather than uploading a copy of a photo that's already on the website somewhere else.
5. Use Faculty Photos from the Shared Media library. Do not upload your own. We now have full-time and adjunct photos in the library (in two separate lists: Faculty_OC and Faculty_adjunct). Send new or replacement photos webmaster@chapman.edu to be added and added to the library. This will assist us in having one, current photo that is used everywhere on the website and in the faculty directory, and prevent us from having to modify all the pages independently or have different photos on different pages.
6. If you upload your own image to a page it must already by cropped to 234 pixels in width (72 dpi) if used for the 2nd, right-side column, or 690 pixels maximum if the page-width of a 1-column layout page. You'll need a tool like Photoshop to resize it proportionally while preserving the quality. Don't upload a large photo then try to set the <img> tag width and height to something smaller than the photo actually is. This will result in a photo that looks jagged and distorted and will make your page slow to load.

Links

1. ALL links on the Chapman site must be cardinal red with no-underline until you hover over the link, which is a default setting from the site's styles sheets.
2. Don't make any text RED or MAROON in color as those are reserved for links.
3. If you have a link to a PDF on the page, indicate that by saying (PDF) after the title or text of the link, and provide a link somewhere on the page to the Adobe Reader download page which is http://get.adobe.com/reader.
4. A link should not use general text like "Click Here" because that makes the content unclear. Link the most significant word(s) and rewrite so it does not contain click here. For example, instead of “All the policies and procedures are in the Student Conduct Code. Click Here”, it would be better to remove the Click Here and link the phrase “Student Conduct Code” instead.
5. If you link to a page on an external website, use the TARGET parameter in the link to launch a new browser window by typing in newWindow in that field when you create or edit the link tag.
6. Don't use underlines. If text is underlined users assume it is a link. Use bold or italic for emphasis instead.

Forms

• If you have an online form on your webpage, then each form field should have a field name that is unique and descriptive. Don’t use field1, field2, field3 etc. Use field names such as FirstName, LastName, StreetAddress etc. 
• Each form field should also have a ID parameter and a TITLE parameter in the html of the field. They should be unique within the form and descriptive. For example
  <input type=text name=firstname id=firstname title=”Your First Name” value=”” size=30>