epa web procedures and standards october 26, 2010
TRANSCRIPT
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
• 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.
Do not add exit tag to other federal Web sites example
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• Update/rewrite outdated but still useful content
• Outdated content that still provides useful info gets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.
Standards: Common Errors
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 JavaScript
http://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
Example with JavaScript
Example Without JavaScript
Contact: Judy Dew
Office content/infrastructure coordinatorshttp://www.epa.gov/webgovernance/leadership.html