Technical Requirements

Here you will find some of the technical standards and recommendations that have guided the design and improvement of the Lane website. If you have questions about them, or would like to know more, contact Lori Brenden, Information Technology, ext. 3354.

Lane Templates

All pages on the Lane website are required to use one of the Lane templates to ensure consistency as well as ADA compliance.

Browsers, Monitors and Connection Speed

Lane's webpages are designed to display on a variety of browsers, including back to Firefox versions 1.5 and Internet Explorer 7.0. Pages are designed for optimum viewing at a resolution of 1024 x 768. Some people visiting the Lane website still have dial-up connections, so Lane pages are designed to load fast. Any files linked from a page as a download-for example, a pdf file or a Word document-should be as small as possible and the file size and type should be indicated in parenthesis after the link. In addition, if the file is a pdf, a link to download Adobe Acrobat should be included if that is the type of file to be viewed. The Adobe logo should be aligned absolute middle to the text. Examples of wording below:

(1.4 mb .doc file)
(53k PDF file)**

**( Requires Adobe Reader. )

File Names and References

Use only lowercase letters for all file references, file names, e-mail addresses, URLs, hrefs (links), https, and directory/subdirectory names. The http:// in your links must be all lowercase. An example of this is: http://2011sitearchive.lanecc.edu/aboutlcc.htm. The file name for each of your pages should use as few characters as possible. Using very long file names may prevent some browsers from loading your page. In addition, file names that are too long may prevent the file from even being able to be uploaded to the server. Be as concise as possible and make good use of abbreviations. Do not use spaces or odd characters such as -, &, *.

ADA Requirements

Lane Community College is committed to meeting ADA requirements and making our website accessible to all visitors. See ADA Requirements for more information.

Software required to maintain Lane webpages

You must use either Dreamweaver or Contribute to maintain and update your pages. Contact Lori Brenden, Information Technology, ext. 3354 for additional information.

Search Engine Optimization

Your webpage titles-the words appearing at the top of your browser window-should contain "Lane Community College" and include the department name or primary content of the page. Search engines look for this information. Some search engines also look for and use metatags and keywords included in the source code so you should add them to optimize your pages' ranking in a search.

Computer Languages

When experimenting with languages other than HTML, such as Perl, Flash, JavaScript, or php, please check with Lori Brenden in Information Technology, ext. 3354, to find out if there are specifications for using these on Lane's site.

Information Redundancy

Avoid redundancies in information by reviewing Lane's site to ensure that the information you plan to put in your pages is not already somewhere else on Lane's site. If it is, link to that information from your page. For more information about links, see Fonts, Headings and Links.

Footer Information

The footer should always include the following information:

• A "Return to Lane's homepage" separated by horizontal rules
• Department name, address, phone, and location on campus
• An e-mail link for comments about the page (directed to an LCC e-mail account only)
• A revision date and the initials of person making the update
• Copyright information, as shown: © 1996-present Lane Community College

Testing Pages

Test your webpages thoroughly. Check links to be sure they are working and going to the correct pages. Print out pages to see how they print. View and test your pages on a variety of operating systems, browsers, and modem speeds so that problems such as misalignment, broken graphics and incorrect spacing can be avoided. What might appear to look and work well on one browser might not look or work so well on another.

Contact Lori Brenden, Information Technology, ext. 3354 for answers to questions or additional information about Lane's website.