The good people at Adobe brought their "Getting Down to Business" web publishing seminar to town the other day, and left us with three hours worth of good ideas and some chocolate chip cookies that must have been worth a thousand calories apiece.  The presentation was undeniably commercial in intent, but although no software but Adobe's was in evidence, the tips and ideas they passed along are generic and worthy of sharing.  I have made some edits for the sake of compatibility with our needs, but credit belongs to Adobe.

1.  Build the site for the ultimate user, not yourself.  Make it easy for the user to find information quickly.

2.  Test your ideas before you commit to anything.  Look at your pages through different browsers and different internet service providers.  If it doesn't load in a few seconds over a 28.8 modem, try to make it smaller.

3.  Practice K.I.S.S.  (Keep It Simple, Stupid).  {I don't like the implied contempt in the "Stupid" epithet, and prefer the Cub Scouts' K.I.S.M.I.F. - Keep It Simple, Make It Fun.}  High quality is more important than quantity.

4.  Put your URL (Universal Resource Locator; read, "web address") on everything: business cards, stationery, T-shirts.  If they can't find us, they don't know what we have to say.

5.  Keep text passages brief.  Folks don't read much any more.

6.  Keep file sizes of graphics small for fast downloading.  A good general rule is to keep a page to 50K bytes or less.  Remember that some of our users are looking at us through a 28.8 modem.

7.  Put only a few link choices on a given screen.  Most people can absorb only a few choices before they become confused.

8.  Keep the site fresh by updating the content from time to time.  What do YOU think when you log onto a site and find the "New, Hot Stuff" dated from six months ago?

9.  Make the download process as simple and flexible as possible.  (Not everyone has a particular piece of software; not everyone knows the FTP process; and above all, not everyone has a fast access to the Internet.  The 10 Meg map file you're so proud of may take the user at the agency an hour or more to download, and a lot of things can go wrong in an hour.)

10.  Permit, even encourage, humor on your web page.  Even professional bureaucrats shouldn't be so self-important that they come across as stuffy and pompous.

11.  Remember Section 508!  All governmental Web pages (and a lot of other stuff) MUST be accessible to all, including the disabled.  As in #3 above, keep it simple, using a minimum of graphics and tables, and abide by the 16 Web Accessibility Standards.

12. Make maximum use of links.  If someone else has already posted information on a Web site, and you want to post the same information, link to their site instead of re-posting on yours.