Teacher Website Help Page

New teacher websites are now available through Greenville County Schools Google Apps for Education. All teachers and employees in the district have an account. You may go to google.com and login using your district username with "@greenvilleschools.us". The district uses single sign-on so your district password will enable you to login. If you have problems, contact the Technical Help Desk at (355-4357 or 355-help@greenville.k12.sc.us).

General Website Best Practices

Empathize with your visitor.

Anticipate the content that your visitor may be seeking and provide it for them.
Understand that your visitors will be using different browsers and different devices and try to test your website for this.
Create a navigation which is clear and logical.
Resize your pictures before posting to your website. Posting very large pictures on your website can be made to look smaller, but are in fact very large in file size. Very large pictures on a web page will slow down the load-time of your page. This may not be noticeable on a fast network, but will be very noticeable on a mobile network.

Your front page is your welcome mat. It is very often the first impression someone will ever have of you.

Your front page is your most valuable real-estate.
Do not post a lot of "static content" on your front page. This would be things like your schedule, mission statement, picture of your school, etc.
Post content that will regularly change so that visitors do not get a feeling that your site is "stale". Pictures, calendar and a mini-blog are examples of content which is not static.

If you have a question or comment on this, please Email our Webmaster.

Website Do's - Basic Tips for Creating Your Pages

So, what makes a good web page anyway? You know a lot about that from your own surfing experience. They're nice and clean looking. They load fast. They are easy to navigate. They have good, understandable, usable, original content. Make yours like that. Here are some fundamental rules to help you.

Overall Site Design

First, decide on the common look of your site. Every good web site has a common look and feel. The navigation, colors, basic images all stay the same throughout the site. Unify the pages with a common theme. On your pages keep the graphics small and clean. Make the layout logical and easy to use. Keep it simple - Use only a FEW fonts, colors, graphics on each page.

Here are a few basic Do's.

DO

Content, content, content! In Real Estate, it's Location, location, location. In web sites, Content is King! Original, useful content is the reason visitors come to your site. Ask yourself what YOU would want to find on a site like yours. Then, create that content for your visitor. On the other hand, if you don't have something useful to say, save yourself and your visitors the time and aggravation -- don't make the page.
For newsletters, syllabi, and other documents, it is recommended that you convert these to pdf format.
It is recommended that you convert all PowerPoints, Word Documents, and Excel spreadsheets to PDF format and link to them.
When linking to your uploaded file, it is best to set the file to open in a "New Window". This will cause the document to open in a new window without leaving your website. Failing to do this will mean that the only way to navigate back to your site is by using the "Back" button in your browser. If the user opens the document in a new window, when they close the document, they will still be at your website.
Make sure your pages load quickly. In spite of the increased speed of modems, visitors will not stand for slow loading pages. Images are a common culprit for slow-loading pages. Make sure to re-size your pictures before you upload them to your site. A good program for this is Microsoft Office Picture Manager. Do not upload high-resolution pictures taken from your digital camera without first of all resizing them,
Keep your page length reasonable. Web surfers have gotten more knowledgeable these days, so the old rule of one or two screens no longer holds. They will scroll down for more good content. But, still keep your pages relatively short. Three or four screens long should be your maximum. If your pages are longer, create anchors (bookmarks) and put links at the top of your page.
Your website frontpage is your "welcome mat". It is a good idea to change this page regularly to keep it fresh. You can use this page to blog, put up news items, student pictures, etc. This will keep your welcome page fresh and inspire parents, students, and the community to return to your site. If your front page never changes, it becomes mundane and dull and parents will be less likely to return. The front page should "tease" your visitors inspiring them explore your site.
Make sure your navigation is logical as it provides a "roadmap" to enable your visitor to access your content. Decide on your main navigation pages and create sub-pages when necessary.

Proofread Your Pages

This should go without saying, but -- check for errors. Spell check for obvious typos, then read your copy, then read it again. Most editors that you might choose to use have a Spell Check feature. Use it. Check your links to make sure they go somewhere. Make sure all the graphics are coming up. After you have created a page or pages, actually go through the site (the master copy before you FTP it to the server) in your browser to see how it looks to your visitors. If you can, use more than one brand of browser to review your work before you post it.

Website Don'ts - Basic Tips for Creating Your Pages - DON'T

Know the Do This part of Web Design, avoid the pitfalls. What makes a bad page? As sure as you know what makes a good one, you know a lot about bad ones. They're junky looking. They use lots of bad moving images and because of that, they are slow to load. You can't figure out where things are - they are impossible to navigate. They have old, outdated, unusable content. There is no original content - just long, nondescriptive links to other sites (and many of the links don't work to boot).

DON'T

Don't overuse big images and especially animated Gifs. When you're first starting to build your pages, it's nearly irresistible to include lots of those cute moving images (animated Gifs) and big, beautiful pictures. But, they bloat the file size of your pages and, worse, overuse of them looks tacky and distracts your viewer from the real meat of your page. Here's a great example of a pathetic web page designed to encourage normal people NOT to return,
Here's an animation' that is here just to show you how distracting they can be --

While we said that visitors will wait for good content, they will not wait if the extra file size is devoted to background music, dancing bears and other extraneous cuteness. Visitors to your site are MOST interested in CONTENT.
A page of nothing but links (half of which no longer go anywhere) is frustrating to your visitors. There are dozens of really good, subject specific web review sites out there. They are well researched, logically organized and searchable. You can't hope to compete with them -- you don't have the time nor the resources. You can Use them by providing a few links to the best in your subject area. Include a short editorial comment of what your visitor can expect if they go there. Don't provide a long, useless list of sites. In link pages, a short list of quality sites is best. Overdoing it is irritating and confusing. Make sure to check your links regularly to make sure they are current and appropriate.
Speaking of links, don't put external links on your Home Page. Visitors will see the link, think it may interest them and they are gone from your site before they see any of your content.
Links to inappropriate sites are not allowed. It is assumed links to other sites have been researched by the school or teacher and found to be educationally important and appropriate.
Don't use a 'busy' background image. It's hard on the eyes and harder to read. Use contrasting colors for background and text. White background with black text is still the best bet.
Don't use images as your only links. If you do use them, have text-only links as an option. People hate waiting for multiple images to download so they can click on them. And, whenever you do use images on your pages, always provide "Alt Text" for those who surf with the images turned off or are visually handicapped.
Never use an "Under Construction" sign. A web site is never done, so everyone knows its under construction - it's the Web. If an area of your site isn't complete, don't provide a link to it! It makes you and your whole site look bad. If additional pages are anticipated, but not yet developed, the text that will provide such a link should be included. However, the actual links to the pages should not be made until they are actually in place on the District server.
Don't EMBED music in pages. It makes pages take FOREVER to download. If you want to offer a sound file, make sure that it does not automatically play so that the users has an option to choose to play or not.
DON'T TYPE EVERYTHING IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE IT MAKES THINGS REALLY HARD TO READ.
Don't bold everything because bolding is meant for emphasis.
Don't underline ANYTHING, especially colored text. Links are usually underlined. If you underline normal text, your visitors will think it's a link.
Don't use cute or obscure fonts. While that nifty font you just downloaded may look great to you on your computer, chances are your visitors will not have it installed. So, their computer will use the "Default" font and what your page looks like to them will be completely different from what you intended. Use standard fonts and specify multiple choices that are nearly the same so your visitor gets the look that you designed.

Teacher Website Evaluation Criteria - 100 points

Student Work or Students at Work (20)

Student created digital work related to classroom instruction
Pictures of students actively engaged in activities related to the classroom curriculum
Pictures of work created by students

Parent Resources (20)

Parent Information Page
Contact Information
Homework Assignments
Calendar of Events
Newsletter
Syllabus

Student Resources (20)

Support materials provide to students to help support instruction (PowerPoint, links, documents, etc)
Homework Assignments
Calendar of Events
Newsletter
Syllabus

Freshness (20) – site up-to-date with current content

Functionality (20)

Load time not inhibited by oversized pictures
No horizontal scrolling present
Navigation logical and smooth
No excessive animation effects

Report abuse