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Successfully Preparing Your Website for OWC Review

This page was previously called "How to Avoid Multiple Rounds of OWC Review When Creating New Resource Directories and Microsites"

Keep these guidelines and requirements in mind as you develop the content for your website. We will send your site back to you for further work if we see that your site does not follow these guidelines.

This document only discusses the most common issues that we see. You should have read and be familiar with all provisions of all One EPA Web requirements/guidance.  If we see issues other than those listed below, we may send your site back to you for further work.  For example:
  • broken links
  • accessibility mistakes, like improper alt text for images
  • poor grammar and misspellings

See process guidance and content guidance resources for more help.

1. Limit content to focus on key audiences' top tasks

  • Pare your content down to eliminate ALL content that does not address the top tasks of top audiences. Do not shift the entire content of your TSSMS account into Drupal.
  • Focus every paragraph on top tasks.
    • Do not include sentences that tell your visitors that EPA reached out to stakeholders in 2005, or include paragraphs describing how we celebrated the 20th anniversary of FIFRA in 2002. This kind of text does not address your visitors' top tasks.

  • Review Step-by-Step Guide for EICs, Step 5: Define the purpose, audiences and top tasks for your site

2. Use plain language and be concise

Sentences should be no more than about 25 words, and often much shorter. Paragraphs should be no more than about 70. Use bulleted lists whenever you include a string of three or more terms or clauses.
  • Don't bury verbs. For example don't say that "we will focus on implementing a plan to do x" when you can say "we will do X."
  • Use the active voice. For example, say "we will do X" rather than "X will be done."
  • Learn more at Writing for the Web requirements

3. Create great page titles

  • Create page titles that are unique.
    • Visitors coming straight from a search engine need to understand the precise scope of information on the page. Do not assume that a visitor to your "Basics" page will realize its context (Basics of what?).
  • Do not use unexplained acronyms or abbreviations in page titles. 
    • Remember that some of your visitors may come straight from a search engine to your page.
  • Limit compound adjectives. 
    • Avoid compound adjectives in your titles that include more than two words. The phrase "Mercury Training and Resources Management Program Frequently Asked Questions" consists of a noun, "questions", with an eight-word compound adjective in front of it. Instead, use "Frequently-Asked Questions about the Mercury Training and Resources Management Program."
  • Don't start your page title with "More..." or "Additional..."
    • Your visitors will frequently arrive on a web page straight from a search engine. When they do, their reaction upon reading your page title will be "More than what?" or "Additional to what?"
  • See Metadata for WebCMS Pages: Title for more tips and examples

4. Write clear headings

  • Use descending levels of size.
    • Begin with <h2>. Do not skip <h2> and go straight to <h3>.
    • Correct heading size is important for visitors who use screen readers; they will often set the screen readers to read only headings of particular sizes. You can learn more about this on AccessibilityTips.comExit
  • Do not link heading text.
  • Do not display heading text in any color other than black.
  • Follow Web Style Guide: Headings

5. Use good link text

  • Make sure that your link text is understandable.
    • URL addresses should never be used as link text unless you are trying to get your visitor to remember the URL, such as epa.gov/tips. Remember that visitors often scan from link to link to find information; scanning from one URL to another is not helpful.
  • Make sure that your link text matches the destination content.
    • A link is a promise. A broken link is a broken promise. A link that works, but goes to a page that seems to be on a different topic, is almost as bad; it's a damaged promise. Damaged promises chip away at EPA's trust and credibility. The destination page should fulfill what the link text promises.
  • Follow Web Standard: Link Text

6. Use the wide template only when you really need it

Drupal's edit view includes a box to check if you want to display your content in the wide template. Do not check the box unless you really need the wide template, which removes the left sidebar in microsites.

7. Don't forget about your Contact Us page

  • Make sure the page title is in the format "Contact Us About Curly Mustaches". It should not be "Contact Us" (because that would not be unique) or "Curly Mustaches Contact Us" (because that does not make sense grammatically).
  • A mailing address is required. Don't forget to add it.
  • Emails sent using the form will go to the Editor-in-Chief unless another address is coded into the form.
  • Follow Web standard: Contact Us Page and Links

8. Use "(xx pp, yy K, About PDF)" or "(PDF)" only if you are linking directly to a PDF

Pages, such as document pages, that link directly to PDFs should include "(xx pp, yy K, About PDF)" next to the links to PDFs. Links on basic pages to document pages should not include this information.

9. Limit the number of bullets in a list

Your visitors' eyes will glaze over if you have more than about seven bullets in a row. If you do, create sub-groups in your list, with headings for those sub-groups in appropriate heading sizes (usually but not always <h3>).

10. Delete unwanted content before you submit for review

Review all your content in the Drupal Web CMS Dashboard and delete test pages or incomplete pages, so that when you do publish, you don't publish anything inadvertently.

11. Limit capitalization

Don't capitalize terms like EPA's Coordinated Approach on Asthma, or Mercury, or Tolerance Exemptions. You can capitalize a word if it's at the beginning of a sentence or if it is part of a proper noun. if you are unsure, err on the side of not capitalizing it.

12. Make long pages easy to navigate

Got a page that is more than three screens long? Add a table of contents at the top and use anchor links.

13. For a microsite, create a sidebar that meets standards

14. For a resource directory, make sure home page images are aligned in all browsers

Check your home page in Chrome, IE and Firefox to ensure that all of your images are horizontally aligned. If not, try one of these solutions: 
  • If your headings are different lengths (two lines of text versus one), force both headings on to the same number of lines of text. Make the one-line heading take up two lines by putting a line break tag </br> just before it.
  • Make sure that your images are contained in div tags rather than in paragraph tags. Using a mix of div and paragraph tags to house your images may result in misalignment.

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