Overview
The “Clean Up the Web” campaign is a campus-wide initiative to update the University Web Standard as well as campus Web training and support. “Clean Up the Web” is sponsored by the Office of the Provost, the Senior Technology Leadership Team and University Communications.
Five core principles have influenced the design of the "Clean Up the Web" Toolkit and specification:
- Design flexibility: Allowing individual departments the freedom to define their own visual identity.
- Consistent Fresno State branding: Maintaining a consistent university look
- Ease of maintenance: Enabling non-Web developers to maintain website content
- Accessibility: Guaranteeing accessible Web content for persons with disabilities (a legal requirement)
- W3C standards compliant: Adhering to industry standards “under the hood”, rather than vendor-specific solutions
Benefits of adopting the new standard
There are many benefits to adopting the University Web Standard.
- Speed of development time: By using the sample layouts as a foundation, the Web developer does not have to spend time constructing and testing any page structure.
- Accessibility: The sample layouts are built so they are easily read by adaptive technologies.
- Sites load faster: By having the visual information separate from the page structure, pages download much quicker.
- Sites are easily found by search engines: By having the visual information separate from the page content, the keyword density becomes much greater which makes a site easier to search and more likely to be found by search engines.
- Pages look identical in all major browsers: By following W3C standards and semantic markup, pages run on all major standards-compliant browsers without extra coding
- University look is already applied: University approved graphics are already in place and do not need to be constructed or approved.
- Easy to change the visual design: Since all visual design information is controlled by stylesheets, changing the visual design becomes a much simpler process. A site does not have to be rebuilt to change the look.
Refining the "Clean Up the Web" Web Specification
Over time the "Clean Up the Web" Web Specification will naturally expand and change. The underlying architecture is extremely flexible. By following the specification, a standard-based site will easily accommodate changes the future will bring.
Suggestions for improvement, requests for additions, comments and questions are welcome and should be posted on the “Clean Up the Web” website. There is a form for submitting this information at: