The University provides all Mason students with space for web pages. If you've never made a web page, or don't know how to begin, you can get technical help from the Student Technology Assistance and Resource Center (STAR). The STAR lab will show you the basics of making a web page, including how to transfer files to the web server and what software to use. You don't need to do anything fancy: just a simple, effective presentation of your ideas and conclusions. Microsoft Word, a program availble to all Mason students, can make web pages. The technical barriers to making a web page are low. There are a few simple guidelines you can follow to help make your web pages more effective.

For this course, think of a web site as an academic paper. A good paper needs a thesis, a single main point it is trying to make. You should eliminate all the elements of the paper which don't contribute to that point. Digressions, changes of subject, run on sentences, sudden shifts of style or tense—all these things should be eliminated. An effective paper is concise, focused, and unified. All the elements of the paper point towards the same conclusion. A well designed website should work the same way.

The most common mistake in website design is clutter, as people change fonts, colors, and add graphics simply because they can. The website ends up distracting, disorganized, and incoherent. Like a paper, the website should be unified. All the elements—the font, the graphics, the colors—should reinforce the central theme or point. For example, a historical website on the Civil War should probably not use a modern font, like this one. It should use a typeface more appropriate to the era is is describing: something more like this. This is especially true if you are using ornamental fonts. Choose a font that matches the era you are describing. Don't use more than one font most of the time, and more than a few styles. Good text speaks for itself—it doesn't need to shout in bold, blink, or jump up and down.

In general, avoid background textures or images, or a lot of colors in the background. Think about it—how often do you read print on any color other than plain white? How often does the type change in books?

The images should relate to the subject matter, and be consistent in size and "look." If images change size a lot, the reader asks him or herself why: Is the bigger image more important? Why has the size changed? This page, for example, is about building effective websites for a history course. The illustrations are of women doing industrial work in WWII, building airplanes. So they combine the theme of building, the theme of breaking from tradition/new technology, and the theme of US history. They are consistent in look, in size, and in subject matter. Don't pick images just because you think they look good—make sure they look good, and have something to do with the subject.

It's also important to think about readability, and here you can borrow from print conventions. Text should have generous margins—have you ever read a book with no margins? Web pages with no margins, where the text extends to the edges of the page, are tiring to read. Typesetters assume that in print, each line of text should have an average of twelve to fourteen words. These familiar conventions make reading books easier, and they work just as well in cyberspace. Lots of colors, lots of fonts, and no margins just irritate the reader.

There's plenty of room to play around with web pages, but remember, this is an academic exercise--it has to have a thesis, it has to be consistent, it has to make its point quickly and effectively. Think of the images, the overall style of the page, as part of your argument. You don't have to follow any of these suggestions, but you need to make your arguments with clarity and economy, as you would in a good paper. Be creative, but disciplined.

Professor O'Malley has written a longer essay on this subject, found here.