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EPA Web Procedures and Standards. October 26, 2010. How to Find Them. EPA’s Web Guide http://www.epa.gov/webguide/. EPA Web Procedures. Ensuring Access to EPA Information on EPA Servers http://yosemite.epa.gov/OEI/webguide.nsf/standards-guidance/epa-servers
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EPA Web Procedures and Standards October 26, 2010
How to Find Them • EPA’s Web Guidehttp://www.epa.gov/webguide/
EPA Web Procedures • Ensuring Access to EPA Information on EPA Servers http://yosemite.epa.gov/OEI/webguide.nsf/standards-guidance/epa-servers • Protecting Content during Web Site Development http://yosemite.epa.gov/OEI/webguide.nsf/standards-guidance/protect-dev-sites
EPA Web Procedures • External Site Links http://yosemite.epa.gov/OEI/webguide.nsf/standards-guidance/external-links • Complying with epa.gov “Look and Feel”http://yosemite.epa.gov/OEI/webguide.nsf/standards-guidance/look-feel
External Links • Do not add an exit tag to other federal government web sites. • Use the common code in the procedure. Do not create your own exit tag or a local copy of the image. • Check your links quarterly, per OMB policy, to be sure that: • They are still active and not broken. • The page being linked to has not been replaced with something inappropriate. • Easy fix – check maxamine QA reports monthly for broken links and inappropriate links.
Complying with epa.gov “Look and Feel” • http://www.epa.gov/epafiles/ • Template 4 is for: • New sites • Sites who have talked with OEA and gotten approval to go through the redesign process. http://www.epa.gov/productreview/guide/pdev.html#web
Complying with epa.gov “Look and Feel” • You can update your site in Template 3.2.1 • Add new content as needed • Treat your ROT • Verify and republish existing content • Update/rewrite outdated but still useful content • Outdated content that still provides useful info gets disclaimer • Remove obsolete content
Search • Problem: • Setting up Search for an area using Template 3.2.1 • Search fails • Resolution: • We’ve removed area search from the templates • Implement poorly • Users didn’t know what an area was and were searching a limited set of content • Template team and search team believe that when you search, regardless of page, should get the same results • If using an older template, check your search parameters
Search cont. • Problem: Overarching homepage does not include subareas in search • Example: Water shouldn’t just search the area for it but also OWOW, OGWDW, OST, OWM • Resolution: If you’re responsible for an overarching subject homepage, check that the search is looking across all the websites that are related.
Contact Us Page • Contact Us Page. Requires a link to a separate page with contact information. • The problem: • The template just has a # sign in the code. The contact us link isn’t added. The link doesn’t work. • People go to a working page and use the wrong contact us link. • Questions are not sent to the content managers. • Solution: • Create a Contact US page. • Update the link to the page in the two places in the template.
Contact Us Page • Problem: Form requires an e-mail address.There’s a requirement that people can submit information anonymously. • Solution: Don’t make the e-mail address field required • To avoid spam: Use the type in a word to submit option. http://www.epa.gov/epafiles/s/forms.html • People do have to provide an e-mail address if they want to get a response.
PDF Linking • The words matter. • Helps people know what they’re going to get when they click on link. • Helps search engines • Link text counts as text in the target document. In fact, "Keyword-focused anchor text from external links" is the single most important factor in relevance calculations. – Peter Buch, EPA searchmaster
Examples • What NOT to do: • Title changed to protect the guilty. Brochure 8 pp, 2.1MB • Title changed to protect the guilty. PDF (24pp. 890K) • What TO DO: • Title of document (PDF) (24pp. 890K) • Title of document (PDF) (8pp. 2.1MB) • It’s OK to repeat the title twice, if you have two formats. • Title of document (Word) (8pp. 200K) • Title of document (PDF) (8pp. 2.1MB)
Graphic File Size • Problem: posting a large image and controlling size by setting width and height. • Customers have to download large images. • Images largest source of download burden. Slow to load pages can blame images most of the time. • Solution: Resize the graphic file in a graphic program. • Compress as much as possible without degrading quality.
New Icon • Functionality is now part of EPA’s mother javascript. • Directions to use are part of the new icon standard.http://yosemite.epa.gov/OEI/webguide.nsf/standards-guidance/newicon
JavaScript • Used to enhance • Don’t provide content using JavaScripthttp://www.epa.gov/athens/allresearch.html • Content or HTML elements that only make sense with JavaScript available must be created by JavaScript
At EPA that means • 59,080 requests/day from people with JavaScript turned off • September’s average successful requests for pages per day: 2,954,007 • 2% average US browsers have JavaScript turned off (Estimate from Yahoo!) • FYI: the US had the highest rate of users with JS turned off
Contact: Judy Dew dew.judy@epa.gov Office content/infrastructure coordinatorshttp://www.epa.gov/webgovernance/leadership.html