Dakota State University Web Style Guide

Footer Requirements

A page footer is required on each page in the DSU web. This footer must incorporate some of the basic design principles of the header to "frame" the page and its contents.

Each page on the DSU web must contain a footer with the following information.

For dated information, the date/timestamp of last update.
Copyright symbol with dates of inclusion.
Department information, address, city, state zip.
Contact information (email) for the page/site author.

Included Content

A good form of content management for items that remain consistent throughout a deparmental/organizational website is the usage of a Microsoft FrontPage 2003 Include Page web component. Using this valuable tool, a page is created that contains the graphic elements in the page banner. When creating and formatting the table that contains the page header and bread crumb trail, simply place the cursor in the cell that will contain the included information and click Insert > Web Component... In the dialog box that appears, select Included Content from the Component left-hand menu and then select Page from the Choose a type of content: area and then click Finish. Provide a path to the page whose content will be placed in the cell. Creating a page header in this way and then copying the same table to each respective page in a department/organization web has a distinct advantage when modifications are necessary. Simply update the source page file to update each individual page header instead of updating every single page with new information.

For numerous reasons, the Front Page 2003 Included Content Web Component is strongly encouraged for headers, footers and navigation menus. The Included Content component allows for the creation of simple web pages that will be used as content for numerous pages throughout your site. For more information on how to use the Included Component tool, click to visit the Microsoft Help Section on their website.

Footer Optional Components

A sample footer graphic which matches the sample header graphic is available for download by clicking on the graphic below.

Again, this image should be used as a cell background in a table. The image is 800 pixels wide by 121 pixels in height. With this item as a background, required text and optional items can be input into the cell.

Page Hit Counters

Page counters are very valuable for tracking web usage. Counters are typically located in the footer portion of pages. The inclusion of page counters is optional, but could provide data for tracking site/page hits.