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Internet Guidelines
Following are some basic guidelines used to develop pages for the FCPS Internet (public) web site.

Definitions:
Home page--the first page of a web collection, usually named index.htm. The FCPS home page is found at http://www.fcps.edu/.
Web site--a collection of pages that are interconnected by links.

The FCPS Internet site is an important means of communicating with interested citizens, parents, families planning a move to the area, potential employees, and the national and international educational communities. It is also a means of communicating with teachers and other staff members, although the growing FCPSnet intranet system is the primary means of such communication.

All public information is appropriate for the Internet. However, priority is placed on information that:

• has a high degree of public interest as evidenced by comments received by telephone and e-mail, by the demand for the information in print form, and by coverage in the media.
• is given a high priority by the School Board or the administration.

The underlying structure of the FCPS Internet site is by department and school. Each school and department designates one curator who places files on the server. Information is held in folders named for the office or school. The public interface, however, presents information in a manner intended to maximize ease of use for external audiences.

• Information is grouped by topic and related topics.
• Topics are listed using the word or words most commonly used by members of the public, which may not coincide with official FCPS nomenclature.
• Topics are grouped by their relationship to one another rather than by the departments that are administratively responsible for the information.
• Information is presented in layers, with the highest layers dedicated to the information most commonly sought by site visitors. (For example, topics listed on the FCPS home page are the most commonly sought items.)

Several criteria are used to make judgments about which "layer" information will be linked from. In general, these criteria are the same as are used by the Office of Community Relations in determining what information to include in press releases and publications and to have available for distribution to the public. Criteria include:

• The number of requests for the information received by telephone, e-mail, and letters to the Office of Community Relations and other FCPS offices.
• The demand for the information in printed form from the Office of Community Relations and other FCPS offices.
• The profile of the information in the news media.
• The number of hits on the page or pages that contain the information, as indicated by the web site statistics package.
• The best judgment of OCR staff members as to the value of the information in terms of public relations and public response.

Last update: August 3, 2001
Curator: Rose Kaspersen, Rose.Kaspersen@fcps.edu