Maintaining Your Web Site
Web site maintenance is an important part of the Web site development process. After all, a Web site is a work in progress. There is nothing more harmful to a site than dated information. Please keep your site current to prevent your visitors from getting discouraged and leaving your site.
Check for Broken Links
It is important to routinely check your site(s) for broken links. Please click here to check the links on your site using the W3C link checker.
The Importance of Contact Information
Contact information is an important feature of any Web site in case a visitor has additional questions. The information should include a telephone number and e-mail address and, if available, a physical address. Also, the link to your contact information should be easy to find. We recommend placing your contact information, or a link to it, on every page footer of your site.
Using FQDN (Fully Qualified Domain Name)
To prevent any potential issues, concerns, or questions regarding the authenticity of USF Web content, please ensure all links utilize the fully qualified DNS name associated with the Web server hosting the content. Doing so will ensure no questions regarding the origin of content, correct crawler reporting, and prevent potential SSL (HTTPS) errors when browsing secure content.
Examples of incorrect linking:
- http://usf.edu/career - Why? usf.edu is not a server. There is a redirect from usf.edu to www.usf.edu and a redirect from www.usf.edu to the correct server usfweb2.usf.edu so this link will appear to work, but it will require multiple redirects and will create multiple entries in the search index. The correct link is http://usfweb2.usf.edu/career
- http://www.usf.edu/career - Why? The site /career is not located on the www.usf.edu server. Thus your browser must follow a redirect and this link will create an erroneous search entry. The correct link is http://usfweb2.usf.edu/career.
- http://isis.fastmail.usf.edu/career - Why? This is the actual name of the server where the career site is located, but it is considered bad form to use a server name in a public url, both because it does nothing to associate the site to the institution's branding (like usfweb2) and it exposes a server name for hackers to prey upon server vulnerabilities. The correct link is http://usfweb2.usf.edu/career
Examples of correct linking:
- http://usfweb2.usf.edu/career
Contact
Angel L. Arcelay
University Webmaster
813-974-8373
Daniel Rafalano
Assistant University Webmaster
813-974-9067