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Web Page Standards for www.RhodeIsland-AA.org www.RhodeIsland-AA.org’s mission is to provide information about alcoholism, sober living and Alcoholics Anonymous to alcoholics and potential alcoholics in the southern New England area. This website provides this information in a quick, clear, format via the internet. Considerable effort goes into maintaining a constant stylistic content on www.RhodeIsland-AA.org. At all times the content of www.RhodeIsland-AA.org is consistent with the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous. It is targeted to two basic populations:
Well formed means the page operates without errors initially on www.RhodeIsland-AA.org’s test site and then its main site. Testing is done with all of the following browsers on each page:
Pages are only tested with the above browsers at the versions given. Users who find our web pages are malfunctioning because they are using old browsers are strongly encouraged to update their browser. The format of the website is consistent and is structured to provide a calming influence on our first time visitor. The web site is also structured to facilitate information seeking. Any comments on our website; it structure, format or language is most welcomed. Please e-mail the webmaster at webmaster@rhodeisland-aa.org. Well formed specifically eliminates html (htm) pages directly generated by Word, Adobe Acrobat, Excel, PowerPoint or the like. PDF, DOC, PPT or XLS files (or the like) are strongly discouraged and are only accommodated on a case by case basis where all other resources are exhausted. Specifically, PDF files are usually very large (by design); require Users to have special software other than the browsers mentioned above and are extremely slow downloading. PDF files definitely have their well earned place in our technical spectrum, but for internet information exchange, software like Publisher (or the like) generates HTML (HTM) files achieving the desired results without the downsides of PDF files. Efficient means minimal load time. The standard load time for any page on www.RhodeIsland-AA.org is 6 seconds or less measured on a computer connected to the internet via cable using a FireFox browser with a FasterFox extension. The time to load a page’s images is included in the page load time. No page is specifically eliminated if the download time is longer than the standard, but every page violating this standard is definite candidates for elimination as this violation is inconsistent with the “quick, clear” mandate of the mission statement. As the pages included in www.RhodeIsland-AA.org are for members or potential members of AA, the message of each page must be completely consistent with Alcoholics Anonymous’ principles. The tests of new web pages are technical as this is not an effort to censor anyone’s message. If a web page’s message is thought to be inconsistent with these principles however, it is not published and is referred to the Web Site committee for their action at their next meeting. If a page or series of pages are controversial, sending these pages to the Web Site committee beforehand may expedite the publication of the web page(s). Generally only internal linkage is allowed on www.RhodeIsland-AA.org – internal linkage is the case where the link on one page addresses a page within the website. There are cases where external linkages are used. Each has been approved by the Web Site committee. A new page, with unapproved external linkage, is not published. If some author believes an external link is necessary in their web page, a dialogue with the Web Site committee beforehand is suggested. If after publication, a web page is found with an unapproved external link, it is removed from the website without notice. To provide consistent style, all authors are heavily encouraged to use styles which are consistent with the styles provided in the following Sample.htm. Deliberately, there is no content in this sample page. There are however links to the cascading style sheet (CSS) used in all of our pages. The second link is to the JavaScript module which provides the relative data stamp at the bottom of most pages. This date stamp is not included on pages generate on the fly -- the meeting list or the town by district query. In these cases the date stamp is always 'Modified Today' and is uninformative. To capture the content of this sample, right click on the page; click on either 'View Page Source'; 'Page Source' or 'Source'; hold down the Ctrl key and press 'A'; open a blank web page on your computer; hold down the Ctrl key and press 'V'. Please use the Styles included in this page as well as the html structure.
While these styles are basic, all authors are encouraged to work within the parameters suggested here. Further, authors are encouraged to place all images in their “images” folder. In the case of duplicate images, authors are encouraged to use those images stored in the root based “images” folder. Each htm page starts with a title and certain meta-tags which describe the page to various browsers and to the internet in general. A fixed set of these have been arrived at for each page and are inserted directly after the HEAD tag. These are used for consistency and to ease the task of search engine crawlers. These meta-tags are modeled after the tags used on the web pages of www.alcoholics-anonymous.org. New pages received during the week are tested on the www.RhodeIsland-AA.org test site. If there is no difficulty, the new page is placed in service (published) by the Sunday following. If this timing presents difficulties please e-mail the webmaster at the address below to arrange for a special schedule. Beyond what is contained here, the webmaster can not be involved with individual web pages. The e-mail address for all business relating to this website is webmaster@rhodeisland-aa.org |