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About this Guide
This guide describes the HTML code and graphics used to create web pages for Wake Forest University. Web authors are encouraged to familiarize themselves with the examples and templates described below.
Maintaining Personal Web Pages
The WFU graphic identity is not to be used on personal pages. Specifically, personal pages should not contain images, logos, graphics or text from the Wake Forest University home page or other official pages. Students, faculty and staff maintaining personal web pages, including student organization sites, should instead refer to the guide on Maintaining Personal Web Pages.
The Wake Forest Web Style: An Overview
Web pages can be wildly different in design, and to present a consistent, easy to use interface, the University has adopted a standard design style for all official University Web pages.
The standard design incorporates:
- A solid white background
- Black text
- The Wake Forest header graphic and imagemap
- A horizontal text header with page title & navigation menu
- Non-framed page design
- Use of cascading stylesheets (CSS) to control typography.
The reason for the standard is simple: each page on the University web site — no matter how obscure — can be reached directly through search engines and links from other sites, bypassing the top-tier pages of the site. Using a standard design at all levels of academic and administrative department sites ensures that users have ample navigational aids to commonly requested pages. The Wake Forest University identity is thus continually reinforced on each page within the site.
Note that the standard does not apply to and should not be used on personal pages of students, faculty and staff.
Sample HTML Code
Web authors can easily build pages that conform to the standard Web style by using some common HTML code for the graphic header, text header and logo footer.
The Graphic Header
The standard header incorporates a graphic and imagemap, a javascript that refers conditionally to one of four cascading style sheets (optimized for Windows, Macintosh, Unix and generic browsers), a BODY tag, and a table that contains the header graphic and background image. The code has been tested on a variety of browsers and appears to function properly across platforms and browser types. The appearance of the header graphic and text may differ on older browsers that do not make use of cascading style sheets and javascript functionality. The complete code for the graphic header is included in the template and should not be altered by the web developer.
The Text Header
The text header includes the page title and navigation menu for the subsite. Because the text header is unique for each page or subsite, it must be edited manually by the web author. The text header is included in the template page.
The Content Area
The content area may be freely edited to suit the needs of the web developer — only the primary table width needs to remain the same. It is strongly recommended that developers use nested tables to columnize or otherwise partition the content area.
The Logo Footer
The footer consists of a simple table with the Wake Forest University logo, address and feedback link. The footer is included in the template and should not be altered by web authors. It should appear on all official university pages.
The Template
The template provides all of the elements of the standard design and serves as a starting point for understanding and using the features described above. Web developers should understand basic HTML prior to using the template.
Please contact Creative Services for a copy of the template.
Additional design elements
The Page Up Pointer
For lengthy pages where users may want to go back to the top of the page, consider using the Page Up pointer:
The HREF tag is needed to make the graphic to work:
<![CDATA[<A HREF="#top">
<IMG SRC="http://www.wfu.edu/images/up.gif" WIDTH="43"
HEIGHT="32" BORDER="0" ALT="Go to top of page">
</a>]]>
Note that a "top" anchor is necessary at the top of the page for this code to work in all browsers. A top anchor is included in the template file.
Current Date
The following code will display the current date in any style text you wish.
<!--#exec cgi="/cgi-bin/textclock.pl"-->
Modifying it with the tag <![CDATA[<FONT COLOR="630000">]]>
Results in:
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Last Date Modified
The following code will display the modification date of a document.
Last modified: <!--#echo var="LAST_MODIFIED" -->
As in:
Last modified: Monday, 27-Apr-09 09:26:43
Access Counts
To include access counts in documents, add the following:
Access count: <!--#exec cmd="/pub/gopher-data/cgi-bin/access_count username-docid" -->
Replace username-docid with your user name and an ID of your own choosing
for the document. For example, if your username is Mary, and you want to keep an access counter for your home page, you could use:
<!--#exec cmd="/pub/gopher-data/cgi-bin/access_count mary-home" -->
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