Step-by-Step Guide

STEP 5:
Choose Template/Design

After you have spent some time dissecting your current site, you will be in a position to choose a template or design for your site.

The first choice you will need to make is whether to use text-based or graphic-based navigation. The former uses HTML and CSS code to create styled text for the navigation labels. The latter has graphical images (in GIF format) for navigation labels. Use the following criteria to choose your site's template type:

Use text-based navigation if you are most concerned with:
Accessibility--Text-based navigation will be resizable in most browsers, but possibly at the expense of your layout breaking apart with large font sizes.
Bandwidth--Text is "cheaper" to download than graphic files, both in terms of raw data transferred and the number of connections required to the Web server.

Use graphic-based navigation if you are most concerned with:
Preserving layout--The graphic labels will not resize, which means your layout will not substantially change with larger font sizes (although the content area of your page, which should be mostly text, will grow in size).
Preserving font characteristics--A GIF image should look the same in any browser, but CSS-styled text (as used in the text-based navigation) could show slight differences between computers depending on the availability of fonts on that computer.

You should use one or more of the standard templates that have already been approved by the Web Presence Team. If you have a unique requirement that is not met by a standard template, you can work with the Web Presence Team to create a new template (with the same general "look and feel"). To avoid future complications, be sure to consult with the Web Presence Team (webpresence@sc.edu) early in the process to ensure that you are using the template as expected.

Do not attempt to reverse-engineer a template under any circumstance. The template makes reference to standard resources (e.g., images, CSS, JavaScript) that a reproduction may not take into account. The templates have been thoroughly tested for browser compatibility. In addition, you should not change the HTML structure of the template. If you feel that changes to the template (other than content) are required for your site, contact the Web Presence Team for assistance.

Also note that the template is targeted for a monitor with an 800 x 600 resolution; this sizing of the template should not be modified. Research showed that the vast majority of our users are visiting the USC Web Presence using computers that are able to display (at least) this resolution. Ideally, a page's content would resize along with the browser window, but using a fixed width provided much more positioning control. Because of the fixed-width tables, you will see bands of white space to the right (and possibly to the bottom) on some higher resolution screens. We have attempted to strike a balance between aesthetics and mainstream technology.

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