To raise community awareness of local issue in order to improve the life of all the inhabitants of Upton. As a secondary objective the site should promote Upton in a good light by highlighting the positive aspects of the area. The potential audience of any website is global but the target audience is the residents and businesses of Upton & district.
Site Performance
(a) – Designed to convey concise information rather than impress with graphic image. As a general rule no page to exceed 100Kb including images. Any larger pages (e.g. containing high resolution images or lengthy documents) to give pre-warning of long downloads.
(b) – Easy navigation at the higher levels by carrying side menus but once fully drilled down to detail sufficient to rely on use of browser ‘Back’ button to return to menu options.
(c) – Good use made of drill down - i.e. lengthy documents headlined and then split up into different identified files. As a general rule high level pages to require little if any scrolling and for lower levels no page to require scrolling more than 5 page lengths (exception – guestbook).
(d) – Good use of ‘site what’s new’ page as a pushdown trace list to aid visitors searching new information.
(e) – Designed for access on old PCs – hence 800 X 600 resolution screens and using long-established HTML tools.
(f) - Coding kept simple to ease interchange between and any transfer of site management personnel.
(g) – No internal search engine but take reasonable steps to aid the major internet search engines to readily find our site.
Content
(a) - The site is the Parish Council’s primary medium for promoting its activities and interests into the public domain (see policy item 4).
(b) – All content to satisfy the criteria of being of a local nature.
(c) – All content to be authorised by the Council. News items to initially be circulated to those members on e-mail allowing 3 days for objections before posting on the site.
(d) - Generally all text to be as brief as possible to convey the intended message. In exceptional cases lowest (drilled down) level documents can be copies of lengthy paper records but only when specifically seen as necessary.
(e) – Local issues outside the Council’s direct influence should only be headlined and links provided to other sites for more information.
(f) – No commercial links meaning no advertising of commercial interests and no links to commercial sites.
(g) – No content to be attributed to any party politics either explicitly stated or implied. All issues relating to Council elections to be handled by the Chester City site.
(h) – All content to be ‘current & up to date’. If when any information is posted on the site and an expiry date is known – then that expiry date should be clearly stated and the expired information generally removed within one week.
(i) – Any information deemed to be of an archived nature to be removed from the site and saved in an ‘archive folder’ on the webmasters hard disc and backed up according to policy 5(c).
(j) – The public can raise issues using a ‘guestbook’ entry (see 5(b)). The Clerk can use the ‘guestbook’ to respond where appropriate with wording agreed with the Council Chairman.
Hardcopy
Frequent requests for hardcopy of webpages, printed off by the Clerk for circulation, should be resisted. Where hardcopy material is needed to alert people of information in a traditional paper manner then this must be a specific Council request and the hardcopy material laid out in a way appropriate to the medium of hardcopy. All content is designed for screen display. If a specific item warrants a facility for users to ‘print in a printer-friendly mode’ then this will be considered on an ‘effort for value’ basis.
Site Security
(a) – Site updating is password protected with password known only to the webmaster and their authorised support staff.
(b) – General public entry to a limited number of Guestbooks (initially only one) to be immediately accessible on the site. Guestbook(s) to be inspected as often as possible and at least every three days with immediate removal of any abusive entry. The webmaster in agreement with either the Council chairman or the Parish Communications committee chairman may immediately remove access to the total guestbook if abusive use warrants. The use of the Guestbook will then be reviewed prior to reinstatement. Similar arrangements can be used to condense entries where deemed appropriate.
(c) – A copy of the site is to be held on the webmasters own hard disc at all times and a back-up copy to be made after extensive update or at least every month.
Policy Review
This policy to be reviewedannually prior to the Council Annual Meeting.