Drafting Schools Site Evaluation

There are a total of 881 drafting schools in the US. While all of these schools have websites, 617 drafting schools have some social media presence, having accounts on at least one of the three major social media outlets, Facebook, Twitter or YouTube. Of the schools that have a social media presence, the greatest number, almost 95% are on Facebook.

Visual Preferences

Color

Approximately 73.4% of the 881 drafting schools use white as the primary color on their websites. Another 8.5% use grey as the primary color on their websites. Blue (4.9%), black (4.1%) and yellow (3.7%) are other colors commonly used as the primary color on drafting school websites.

The colors used on the websites of the largest drafting schools in the nation, are as follows:

1. Miami Dade College: white 10% and blue 2.9%
2. Houston Community College: white 36% and grey 4.3%
3. Northern Virginia Community College: white 11% and grey 4.6%

Font

The largest number, nearly 36.4%, of drafting school websites use Arial as the primary font on their websites. Other fonts commonly used on drafting school websites include Verdana (34.8%) and Tahoma (6.5%).

The largest drafting school's websites use the following fonts:

1. Miami Dade College: Arial
2. Houston Community College: Arial
3. Northern Virginia Community College: Trebuchet

Social Presence

Exactly 349 drafting schools have YouTube channels. These schools each have an average of 64 YouTube channel subscribers. The drafting schools with the greatest number of YouTube channel subscribers are:

1. Purdue University - Main Campus: 2,760 subscribers
2. Grand Rapids Community College: 1,166 subscribers
3. CUNY Queensborough Community College: 988 subscribers

Exactly 426 drafting schools have Twitter accounts. These schools each have an average of 481 Twitter account followers. The drafting schools with the greatest number of Twitter followers are:

1. University of Toledo: 5,830 followers
2. University of Akron Main Campus: 5,682 followers
3. Boise State University: 4,295 followers

Web Metrics

Although all drafting schools have websites, only about 24% of these schools actually appear to regularly maintain their sites. This can be deduced from the fact that 76.9% of drafting school websites have 3 or more broken links one click away from their homepage. The drafting schools with the most number of broken links are:

1. Central Arizona College: 93,584 broken links
2. Tarrant County College District: 14,140 broken links
3. Blue Ridge Community College: 6,741 broken links

It is also interesting to evaluate the number of HTML and CSS validation errors on drafting school websites to get a sense of the quality of these sites. The drafting school websites with the cleanest websites, i.e., least number of HTML and CSS validation errors are:

1. Pima Community College: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
2. Cossatot Community College of the University of Arkansas: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
3. Gavilan College: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors

The drafting school websites with the greatest number of HTML and CSS validation errors include:

1. Bergen Community College: 178 HTML validation errors; 869 CSS validation errors
2. Gainesville State College: 73 HTML validation errors; 893 CSS validation errors
3. Mt. San Jacinto Community College District: 74 HTML validation errors; 841 CSS validation errors