Final Project Criteria Checklist
All our work this term has led (directly or indirectly) to your final project, so you'll find much of that work referenced (implicitly or explicitly) in this Criteria Checklist.
1) Design Consistency - Your Major Project has design consistency through the use of a template, CSS, and a reliable layout and palette. Your index.html page for your project site is a one-off page, and is visually connected to the inner pages of your site through the use of layout, color, and graphics. All inner pages are based on a template and use CSS for presentation. Use other websites for design inspiration and coding ideas, but DO NOT pirate another website's design. (If you have questions, see http://www.pirated-sites.com.) Both design and code are part of your writing for the course. A failure to do your own work is a violation of academic integrity and will result in a failure.
2) Links Page(s) - Your links page (or section) contains at least 15 links to sites that visitors of your site might find interesting. Links are categorized in some way (grouped by topic, ranked according to some criteria, etc.). For each category, you provide some introductory content explaining the category to the user. For each link, you provide a brief descriptive abstract and personal evaluation. Minimum: 750 words of written content on Links Page(s), for an average 50 words per link.
3) Feature Page(s) - Your site contains a page (or section) with a major article on your site's topic. While researched (from the web, the library, or other sources), this article is a genuine contribution to the online material on your site's topic, and effectively defines what your site is really about. It is at least 750 words long, and is written by you. It demonstrates careful attention to the way that users read electronic text, and may incorporate and interweave relevant graphical content as visual text. It is probably broken into sections, with care taken to establish clear organization and sequence. It likely employs subnavigation, and is structured in such a way that it eases scanning and permits browsing.
4) Visual Page(s) - Your site contains a page (or section) that effectively presents content through a visual or visuals. Depending on your project, this information might be graphical (timeline, chart, or table), photographic or artistic (images of a performer or historical figure, screenshots for a discography), or something else. While a significant amount of the information on this page will be communicated visually, you will have written text integrated into the page to establish an appropriate context for the visual. Minimum written content, 200 words.
5) References Page(s) - Your website acknowledges all sources used in the making of the site, and follows APA Citation Style (see Purdue University's APA Guide) through the use of in-text parenthetical references AND a references page containing all your sources. Each link on the Links page can be found on the references page, as can any sources for images, graphical elements, books, articles, or websites used in the making of your site. Each in-text parenthetical reference should also be a hyperlink to the References page so your user can quickly locate your source. While it is customary to credit authors of specific scripts (javascript, for example) with comments in the source code (and you should do this!), you also credit these authors on the References page.
6) Your Final Project is accessible from the Portfolio section of your Personal Website.
Bonus (You really should do this one!): The XHTML markup and linked CSS for your website both validate. If they validate, please indicate this fact with either text or image links. Final Projects that validate as XTHML and CSS earn a one-half grade bonus, making a B project into a B+, and a B+ into an A-. Validate your XHTML here. Validate your CSS here.