Helpful Hints

Make Your Site Easy to Use

Remember to name your home page "index.html." This is the standard for the first page of any new folder. It is the first page all browsers look for.
Keep the home page as short as possible. Don't put everything into one huge page. Your visitors won't read it. See more about this in Writing for the Web.
Visitors often come to your site via a search engine, bookmark or link. They don't always come through your "front door." Remember to put a link on every Web page in your site back to your home page and to the Mt. San Antonio College home page. For an example, look at the navigation in this document. It shows where this page fits in the Web Guide, and also provides links back to higher levels in the college Web hierarchy. Using the site template will help you organize the navigation on your site.
Keep image file sizes small.
Be careful with background colors and background images. You don't want to use a background image that will interfere with the reading of the text.

Routinely check your pages for links that no longer work and fix them.
Routinely check the content on your Web site for accuracy. Remove any outdated information and add new information as appropriate.

Don't change file names of your published pages if at all possible so as not to break links from other sites.
Choose file names that are easy to understand so you can be happy with them for a long period of time. If you need to change a file name, especially with the intent of making your URLs easier to use and remember, please contact the web developer in order to have a pointer from the old page to the new page created. This way, if you must rename or move a Web page, users will still be able to find it, and other site owners will have a chance to update their links.

Test your site with different web browsers, monitors, screen sizes, and platforms.
Test your pages using ADA compliant screen readers, such as NVDA (free).
Test your pages to ensure all images use "alt" tags.
Test your pages for broken links.