DIY Webpage Part 4: Tips for Your Class Website

Have you decided to create a website? Are you looking at improving your website? Consider these tips as you build or update your website.

Visual Tips

• Keep graphics to a minimum. Too many graphics can be overwhelming. They can also detract from your message, choose graphics sparingly and carefully.

• Contemplate your colors. Colors can be highly beneficial when trying to make your site look more appealing. However, they can also make it harder to read:
• Only use two to three colors and stick to them throughout your website
• These colors should be contrasting for easy reading
• Be sure that your colors don't conflict with your backgrounds

• Use standard fonts. Stick to standard fonts such as:
• Arial, Georgia, Verdana, Times New Roman, and Sans Serif
• You can use more than one font
• Ensure that they are easy to read and that you do not use too many

Formatting Tips

• Have your website name on every page. Continually seeing your website name can help it become more cemented in visitors’ minds:
• Visitors are more likely to return
• A header that is the same on every page can easily be done on many website builders

• Ensure contact information can easily found. No matter how many newsletters are sent home with the school phone number and your e-mail address, most will get misplaced or lost. When contact information is easily located on your website, you are facilitating home/school communication.

• Check your page length. Visitors do not want to scroll excessively down a page to find the information for which they are looking:  
• For static sites, try to limit each page length to two screen lengths
• For blogs, it is recommended to limit it to six screen lengths

• Place a link to your home screen on every page. In the case that you have many pages on your website, place a home button on every page, so that visitors can easily get back to their starting point. This can be accomplished by ensuring in your header that a link to your home page is included.

Finalizing Tips

• Test your website in several browsers. Sometimes websites can appear different in Internet Explorer versus Firefox. Scroll through your website on several browsers to make sure you like how it looks.

• Be careful with links. When links do not work, it can be very frustrating:
• Click on your links to make sure they connect to the right page
• Underlining words for emphasis is confusing because users think they are links

Additional Tips

• Keep in mind how much time you want to spend updating it:
• Are you someone who will remember to update it daily to include homework information?
• Do you have your schedule so planned out that you could post the homework for the week?
• Do not over-commit to updating your website more than fits your personality and your schedule

• For websites geared toward parents and students, spend time showing them the website. Students are more likely to use a website with which they are familiar, so in the beginning of the year, use it multiple times with your students in class:
• For example, at the end of the day, show them where they can find their homework (if you are posting it on your website)
• Another idea is when you are discussing upcoming events, show them the calendar from your website
• Back-to-School Night offers a great opportunity to show parents your website
• I also recommend that you reference your website as a reminder to parents in any communications with home (e-mail, tweets, notes)
• The more they see and hear about it, the more likely they are to become users