Overall Page Design

• The design of the page from the top navigation bar and up should not be altered in any way.
• All content for your web site section should be contained within the content area of the page (the white area).
• All text within the page must utilize the provided styles (no other fonts, colors, etc. may be used). If you have a special request for a different style, you may ask your Contribute administrator if it would be possible to add your style to the stylesheet.
• The content area of the page should include a 15-pixel gutter (empty column) on the left and right side of the content area, so that text does not begin or end at the edges of the content area. This should already be setup in your template by IT.
• All links to external web sites should be setup to open in a new browser window.
• All links should be functional (open valid web pages), or else they should be removed.
• There should be at least one blank line at the bottom of the content area of every page, after the last textual content on the page.
• Tables that are placed in the content area should not exceed 600 pixels in width.
• All body text in the content area should use the "body-text" style.
• All links in the content area should use the "body-link" style.
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Top Navigation Bar

• The top navigation bar and drop-down menus will be maintained by IT, and should not be altered in any way.
• The main section in which your site resides should be highlighted in yellow for all pages of your site (this should be done for you by IT).
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Left Navigation Bar

• The first item in the left navigation bar should always be "Home", and this item should link to the main Thiel home page.
• All additional items in the left navigation bar should appear in alphabetical order.
• Each link should be indented two spaces from the left side of the screen.
• Each link should be separated by the dotted line image (there should not be any additional white space above or below the dotted line image).
• All links in the left navigation bar should use the "left-nav-link" style.
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Breadcrumb Trail

• The breadcrumb trail is the navigation element that is located at the top of the content area (white space) and below the top navigation bar.
• The trail begins with a link to the main top navigation category in which your web site section is located.
• Then, the trail continues by adding an element for each left navigation category that is chosen inside of your web site section (names for the trail should be the same as the page names), and each of the items should be a link back to the named page.
• All elements of the breadcrumb trail should be separated by a space, then the greater than symbol, then another space ( > ).
• The last item in the breadcrumb trail should be the title of the current page, and should NOT be a link.
• All text in the breadcrumb trail should use the "breadcrumb-text" style.
• All links in the breadcrumb trail should use the "breadcrumb-link" style.
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Creating Links in Contribute

• Whenever you create a link on a page, you must follow these steps in order to ensure that the link styles appear correctly on screen:
  • Type in the text for the link.
  • Highlight the text, click on the "Link" button and add a hyperlink.
  • Highlight the text again, then select the link style from the Style drop-down box.
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Images

• All images should be no greater than 450 pixels in width and height.
• Only images in JPG or GIF format should be used.
• The width and height of an image must be entered correctly (if you wish to resize an image, you must do so in an image editor, you cannot resize an image by changing the width and height values).
• All images must specify ALT (alternate) text - a short description of the image.
• All images must include a 1-pixel black border around the edges. This may be accomplished by creating an image border in Contribute, or it may be accomplished in Adobe Photoshop (see Adding an Image Border with Photoshop). If hspace or vspace padding options are chosen, then the border MUST be created in Adobe Photoshop (because the border will be pushed away from the image with the other method).
• Page titles MUST be created using Adobe Photoshop. If you have Photoshop, you may follow the guidelines below (see Creating Page Titles with Adobe Photoshop 7.0). If you do not have Photoshop, please request any new page title images from your Contribute administrator.
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File Naming Conventions

• All filenames should be lowercase.
• Dashes should be used between words in filenames (no spaces or underscores)
• HTML files should use the three-letter extension (.htm).
• Example: press-release.htm
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Adding an Image Border with Adobe Photoshop 7.0

• Open your image
• Use the Rectangular Marquee tool to select the entire image
• Click Edit --> Stroke
• Choose a 1-pixel black line
• Click OK
• Use File --> Save For Web to save as a GIF/JPG
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