The Barony of Cynnabar Webpage Guidelines

The Barony of Cynnabar allows all of its officers and their designated deputies to maintain their own webpages on the baronial webspace. This webpage was created to provide assistance in this endeavor. Technical guidance is given and SCA and Kingdom Law governing webpages is covered.

Technical Guidelines for the Barony of Cynnabar Webpages
There are not a whole lot of technical guidelines for how to create baronial webpages. If you understand HTML programming you posess 90% of the knowledge you need.

The baronial webpages are created in XHTML. This is essentially the same as HTML with just a few minor differences. This webpage explains the differences very well:
Introduction to XHTML, with eXamples
XHTML also has its own official webpage located here:
http://www.xhtml.org/
In a nutshell, XHTML requires all open elements be closed and all elements to be typed in lower case.

The webpages all use a standard template which can be copied from this location:
http://template.cynnabar.org/
This template takes care of creating the actual HTML document that is view by users. It uses PHP commands to do this. Two files, a header and a footer, are combined with the content that is places into the template. Basically all a person has to do is write the body of their webpage into the template. A webpage title, text, some minor formatting, and optional graphics are all that need to be added to the template to create a new standard baronial webpage. The template is fully commented to easily guide the placement of items.

Indentation of elements just like standard program listings is used. This makes the HTML more comprehensible and helps you ensure you close elements like tables and lists. The template is pre-indented at the indentation level an author should start at.

The website uses only graphic files in PNG file format. This is because PNG is an open source and patent free lossless, portable, and well-compressed format. Most graphic programs, including MS PAINT, support this format.

In order to validate a webpage created using the template you will have to first view it on the web in a web browser. Once you have the page up in a web browser you 'view source' and copy the source into a file. You are then able to run that file through the XHTML validator located here:
http://validator.w3.org/

Kingdom Law's Governing Webpage Content
Middle Kingdom law for webpage content is covered in the Webminister's Handbook. However, the laws for webpage content are pretty simple and are listed below.

• Pages should have a disclaimer. A link to the disclaimer is contained in the standard index.
• Show the date last updated. There is a link in the standard template at the bottom of the page text section for each author to place this.
• A disclaimer for non-SCA maintained sites. This is covered in the disclaimer which is contained in the standard index.
• A disclaimer for links to merchants. This is covered in the disclaimer which is contained in the standard index.
• No material can be used without permission from the author. You may quote material from authors if you credit your sources and follow "fair use".
• You need written permission from all identifiable subjects in a photo before posting it in a webpage. Use this permission form.