Department Websites Tips for Creating Your Departmental Web Site

APSA's web and technology team has put together some guidelines we hope will help you in constructing and maintaining your departmental web sites. Below please find a list of information included on the most informative and useful departmental sites we have found. You may want to consider including this information on your own site.

WEBSITE COMPONENTS

1. Faculty listing, including contact information (rank/fields/phone/fax/email/URL)
2. Departmental staff listing (phone/fax/email)
3. Departmental officers listing - chair, placement director, director of undergraduate studies, director of graduate studies (phone/fax/email)
4. Departmental FedEx/UPS (street) address
5. Departmental/university calendar (deadlines for application, financial aid, drop/add, degree petitions)
6. Majors/minors/concentrations offered
7. Degree requirements
8. Brief departmental synopsis including methodological focus and enrollment in graduate and undergraduate programs
9. Information about departmental financial aid (grants, scholarships, research positions)
10. Courses offered, with brief descriptions
11. Course schedule for current and upcoming semesters
12. Links to institution's library site(s) and placement office site
13. Departmental news and events
14. Departmental initiatives (service learning projects, internships, independent or off-campus study options)
15. Links to any additional university resources available to department members or students (JSTOR, data centers, financial aid office, semester abroad programs, internship opportunities)
16. Links to departmental/university/discipline organizations (Pi Sigma Alpha chapter, student groups, listservs and discussion groups)
17. Links to local, state, regional, national, and international political science organizations and associations

DESIGN TIPS

Remember to check back periodically for outdated information and dead links. You will want to design your site to be as easy to read and navigate as possible, as some of your visitors may be using older versions of browsers or may have slow connection speeds. In order to serve persons with disabilities, APSA recommends following the Federal Web Accessibility Guidelines:

1. Make visual information accessible through text or audio, including alternative text for all images, applets, image maps, graphic buttons, and server side includes used.
2. Make audio information accessible through text.
3. Use colors wisely to allow for sufficient contrast between foreground/text and background.
4. Minimize distracting elements (such as animation or flashing/blinking text).
5. Make the most of organizational elements via clear navigation and providing non-framed alternatives for framed sites.
6. When using scripts and style sheets, make sure that the page is still legible without them.
7. Provide text-only alternative pages.

YOUR SUGGESTIONS

Much like the web itself, this is a living, changing document. We would like to solicit your additional tips and ideas to be added to this list, as well as any general comments about the document. Please send them to web@apsanet.org.