Forestry Schools Site Evaluation

There are a total of 127 forestry schools in the US. While all of these schools have websites, 116 forestry 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 93% are on Facebook.

Visual Preferences

Color

Approximately 64.6% of the 127 forestry schools use white as the primary color on their websites. Another 10.2% use grey as the primary color on their websites. Yellow (8.7%), blue (7.9%) and black (4.7%) are other colors commonly used as the primary color on forestry school websites.

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

1. University of Minnesota - Twin Cities: white 28% and grey 3.2%
2. University of Florida: white 39% and grey 1.6%
3. Texas A & M University - College Station: white 15% and grey 6.9%

Font

The largest number, nearly 44.9%, of forestry school websites use Arial as the primary font on their websites. Other fonts commonly used on forestry school websites include Verdana (22%) and Tahoma (8.7%).

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

1. University of Minnesota - Twin Cities: Helvetica
2. University of Florida: Trebuchet Ms
3. Texas A & M University - College Station: Arial

Social Presence

Exactly 86 forestry schools have YouTube channels. These schools each have an average of 528 YouTube channel subscribers. The forestry schools with the greatest number of YouTube channel subscribers are:

1. Yale University: 20,055 subscribers
2. Purdue University - Main Campus: 2,760 subscribers
3. Oregon State University: 2,420 subscribers

Exactly 90 forestry schools have Twitter accounts. These schools each have an average of 2,875 Twitter account followers. The forestry schools with the greatest number of Twitter followers are:

1. Yale University: 23,748 followers
2. Texas A & M University - College Station: 19,518 followers
3. Auburn University: 17,795 followers

Web Metrics

Although all forestry schools have websites, only about 22% of these schools actually appear to regularly maintain their sites. This can be deduced from the fact that 78.6% of forestry school websites have 3 or more broken links one click away from their homepage. The forestry schools with the most number of broken links are:

1. Michigan Technological University: 918 broken links
2. South Georgia Technical College: 800 broken links
3. Oregon State University: 762 broken links

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

1. California Polytechnic State University - San Luis Obispo: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
2. Pennsylvania State University - Main Campus: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
3. Oklahoma State University - Main Campus: 1 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors

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

1. University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point: 0 HTML validation errors; 1,213 CSS validation errors
2. Alabama A & M University: 63 HTML validation errors; 905 CSS validation errors
3. Haywood Community College: 0 HTML validation errors; 308 CSS validation errors