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Linking Policy |
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Before you submit a page for review by your Guide, please read over the following guidelines. If you're a webmaster, you may wish to alter your page to fit some of these points so that surfers from all over the web (not just from this site) will be able to visit your site with a maximum amount of enjoyment and a minimum amount of irritation.
Please note that About uses a special navigational frame to link to sites on the web. For more about this frame and its purpose, see our page on the topic. The use of the frame is an About policy. If you have any objection to your site appearing within this frame, it would be best if you did not submit it for inclusion.
- A
page must contain useful historical content pertaining to the
Middle Ages or Renaissance.
This doesn't necessarily mean a multithousand-word footnoted essay. A short description of an event, a brief biography, a concise explanation of a facet of medieval life are all welcome, as long as the information is accurate -- and supported with sources. But philosophical ponderings on the nature of chivalry and stream-of-consciousness essays concerning past lives are not "useful historical content."
Maps, illustrations and other graphics are also welcome, as long as a source for the material is provided.
The range of years our site covers is late-fifth century through the seventeenth century. Please consult the appropriate sites in the Homework Help channel for web pages that focus on topics outside this time range or in the pre-Columbian Americas.
- A
page should be visible in most browsers.
Although I have broken this rule in the past and linked to pages that are not very clear when viewed with one or another of the most popular internet browsers, I feel that to continue to do so is a disservice to a significant portion of our visitors. I use the latest versions of Netscape Communicator and Microsoft Internet Explorer to visit sites and evaluate them. If I cannot see the page in one or another of these browsers, I will not explore the site any further, and the pages will not be included here unless and until the problem is fixed.
If you are a webmaster and you use only one of the above browsers to preview your pages, you may want to consider downloading and installing the other. If you haven't the space for both browsers, ask an online friend to take a look at your site.
- A
page is most helpful when it is well-written, properly formatted,
and cleanly designed.
Many of the potential visitors to a medieval history web page are individuals at the college and post-graduate level who are accustomed to reading scholarly, well-crafted essays in professionally-produced books and journals. None of them will thank me for linking to a page with obvious spelling and grammatical errors. I personally find such mistakes extremely annoying, especially since it is the work of a few minutes to run a spell-checker and even a grammar checker on your text in any word processor before applying HTML code. Many HTML editors include spell-checkers, as well, and online handbooks such as On-Line English Grammar by Anthony Hughes and Grammar and Style Notes by Jack Vincent are also available. There's even an online spell-checker, WebSter, that will check your web-page for spelling errors, ignoring HTML code.
Although poorly-designed pages have been included at this site when their content warranted, I always take care in my annotations to warn visitors when a less-than-professional website will give them difficulty in reading the information. I also include hints for getting around design flaws. So, if you don't want the annotation to your link to read, "Hint: select the text for more visibility," get rid of the colorful background. Other design flaws include:- Unnecessary line breaks
- Lack of extra line space or indentation to distinguish paragraphs
- A multitude of frames
- Graphics that overlap text
- Java-dependent or graphic-dependent navigation links (please provide a straight-HTML alternative to such links)
- Music that can't be turned off
- Poor color choices (particularly black-on-red or vice versa, and the ever-popular blinding yellow background that poses a risk to your eyesight).
- Very small text
You can find great design tips and thorough instructions for the use of HTML at About.com's HTML website, where Guide Jennifer Kyrnin offers an outstanding resource for beginners and experienced designers alike.
- Exceedingly
long pages, particularly graphic-intensive or link-intensive
pages, are problematic.
These pages, which take a long time to download on the average modem, also get a warning in the annotation--if their content is useful enough to warrant a link at all. It is much more user-friendly to break up long pages into sub-pages, with a navigation menu or a "next" and "back" link at the bottom of each page so that visitors can easily move on to the next section or review what they've seen. Keep in mind also that pages with a large number of graphics may not completely load for all browsers. If you want your site to be considered a useful resource, please keep each individual page under 100k.
- A
list of links will not be included.
Okay... so you've been surfing the net for a while, and you've collected bookmarks on "really kewl" sites for medieval stuff. Then you took your bookmark file and put it up on the web. Now you think I should link to this page. Ummm... how do I put this? Sorry!
In case you haven't noticed, the 200+ pages of our subject index are link lists -- annotated link lists. And each and every link leads to a page with "useful historical content." The only exceptions are the menu pages of multilevel sites and library/archive lists, and in both cases you will often find helpful information on these pages in addition to the links. Furthermore, the links on these pages lead (primarily) to material at the same site.
However, if you'd like to submit a link list for my perusal, please do! I won't link to it, but I'll investigate links to any pages I do not already have indexed. And thanks!
If you feel the site you'd like to recommend meets all these guidelines, please return to Suggest a Site.
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