History Schools Site Evaluation

There are a total of 1,335 history schools in the US. While all of these schools have websites, 1,276 history 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 96% are on Facebook.

Visual Preferences

Color

Approximately 64.9% of the 1,335 history schools use white as the primary color on their websites. Another 11.3% use grey as the primary color on their websites. Blue (6.4%), black (5.7%) and yellow (5.6%) are other colors commonly used as the primary color on history school websites.

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

1. Arizona State University: grey 34% and white 4.5%
2. Ohio State University - Main Campus: white 30% and grey 3.4%
3. University of Central Florida: white 46% and black 1.6%

Font

The largest number, nearly 41.9%, of history school websites use Arial as the primary font on their websites. Other fonts commonly used on history school websites include Verdana (22.6%) and Helvetica (8.7%).

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

1. Arizona State University: Arial
2. Ohio State University - Main Campus: Helvetica
3. University of Central Florida: Arial

Social Presence

Exactly 977 history schools have YouTube channels. These schools each have an average of 343 YouTube channel subscribers. The history schools with the greatest number of YouTube channel subscribers are:

1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology: 113,180 subscribers
2. Harvard University: 28,331 subscribers
3. Yale University: 20,055 subscribers

Exactly 1,121 history schools have Twitter accounts. These schools each have an average of 1,811 Twitter account followers. The history schools with the greatest number of Twitter followers are:

1. Harvard University: 69,704 followers
2. Indiana University - Bloomington: 27,945 followers
3. Arizona State University: 24,295 followers

Web Metrics

Although all history schools have websites, only about 20% of these schools actually appear to regularly maintain their sites. This can be deduced from the fact that 80.4% of history school websites have 3 or more broken links one click away from their homepage. The history schools with the most number of broken links are:

1. Creighton University: 7,788 broken links
2. Lasell College: 6,728 broken links
3. Northwest Missouri State University: 6,291 broken links

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

1. California Lutheran University: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
2. California Polytechnic State University - San Luis Obispo: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
3. Foothill College: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors

The history 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. Irvine Valley College: 0 HTML validation errors; 854 CSS validation errors
3. University of Colorado Denver: 0 HTML validation errors; 794 CSS validation errors