- Microsoft Office Live Small Business: Beginner's Guide
- Rahul Pitre
- 432字
- 2025-03-31 06:34:05
Setting the footer
Okay, so you now have your website's header under control. Let's jump to the other end of the page and deal with the footer. The usual suspects you'll find in the footers are:
- Navigation links that mimic at least some of a website's main navigation
- Contact information or a link to a page that displays contact information
- Copyright notice
- Links to privacy policy, disclaimers, and other fine print
Note
Why are these elements commonly found in the footer? Because people expect to find them in the footer. A basic principle in designing websites is to place information where people can find it easily. It's not against the law to put the copyright notice in the header. But if you do, people are not likely to find it.
It's a good idea to stick to conventional wisdom and include the following elements in your website's footer:
- A link to the Contact Us page because most people expect to find contact information in the footer
- A copyright notice to placate your lawyers
- A link to the privacy policy of your website because people often don't part with their e-mail addresses and are reluctant to contact you if your website doesn't have a privacy policy
So, your footer will look something like this:
And what about site navigation links? We won't consider them. Here's why:
- As you'll see shortly, you can't build elaborate footers with Office Live Small Business, like the ones you see on blogs these days. Site navigation links tend to clutter the available real estate.
- Their purpose in footers is to save people the trouble of having to scroll long web pages vertically simply to find a navigation link. Since you're building a small website with compact informational pages and not an online magazine with long articles, you don't really need them.
- Some websites use images or scripting languages to build site navigation. People who turn off images or scripting support in their browsers can't see such navigation links. Ten years ago, during the Web's Stone Age, some designers started placing text navigation links in the footers to accommodate those people. Like most modern site-building tools, Office Live Small Business generates text-only site navigation. So, you don't have to repeat the links in the footer.
But that said, you may feel that the navigation links do belong in your website's footer. In the coming sections of this chapter, I'll show you how to add the Contact Us and Privacy Policy links to the footer. Once you know the process, you'll be able to add any other links you wish.