Getting and Staying Organized This may be
the most important unit in this course. It's wonderful how programmers
and webmasters can remember everything and store it in their minds.
Writing or explaining to someone else becomes the challenge that
many of these same people have not mastered. We will master it.
A website may include
many webpages just as a book has many pages, and just as a book
there is a first page, whether it's the first page in the book
or the first page we see when we open the book, a website has
a first webpage. Most webmasters envision that a user will start
on the first webpage, just as an author expects a reader to starts
on the first page of the book. That page will be referred to as
the homepage and typically will be named index.htm
or index.html. Other pages will be linked from
that page.
As you develop your
website, it is very strongly encouraged that you be consistent
in how you do things. There are options, and if you are consistent
in your choices of these options, life will be much easier. It's
your own personal protocol. The first decision
is whether you will call your first page index.htm, typically
considered a PC format, or if you will call your first paage index.html,
which is typically considered a Mac format. Of course, there is
a certain amount of silliness here because that decision is platform
independent. It makes no difference which computer you're using.
I use .html.
For this class you
will create a folder in which you will save everything for your
website. As you experiment, explore and discover you may use some
temporary folders but for any activity you will use one folder
and everything will be in that folder. Here's a second
decision that will build your personal protocol, how
to name your folders and documents. Consistent use of capital
letters, non-capital letters and numbers makes everything easier
for remembering folders and documents in the future. My personal
protocol is to use only non-capital letters and numbers as needed.
In this folder you
will save all your documents. The homepage will typically have
a list of several links to your primary topics or webpages. Each
of those primary webpages should be listed in
your folder in the same list as index.html.
Within your folder
there will typically be at least one other folder named images.
Many programs that create webpages will include or use a folder
named images. In this folder all images for your website will
be saved. As your website becomes very large and complex you may
add subfolders and typically the subfolder will contain another
folder called images where the images for the documents in that
subfolders are saved. This will become clearer as we develop our
websites.
A simple website
will typically have a homepage html document,
several other linked html documents and a cache
of images in the images folder. As the website
becomes more complex there will also be some documents that are
not html documents. These documents will feed information into
all the other html documents. You can make a change in many html
documents by making one change in the document that feeds into
and supports the html document. A cascading style sheet
is one example.
Since we are working
almost exclusively with Dreamweaver in this class, we will find
that Dreamweaver creates other supportive documents that are not
a part of the website. Examples are templates
and library items. Dreamweaver saves these supporting
documents in folders that it creates without our help. However,
how and when we save these documents will make life much easier
in the future, so we will design our process carefully. Planning
is the best way to eliminate problems in the future.
Assignment It's time. Now
is the time. It's time to start thinking about the final project
for this class. Write on one or two pages, double spaced what you
think is the website of your dreams and hopes. Of course, with time
that will change some. Include some thoughts on the following features:
the layout, format of the homepage, what is it coming to look
like
the colors and backgrounds of the different cells of the table
the font size, face and color of
heading titles
subtopic headings
the body of the text
links
auxillary information such as contact information, if
any
the top banner of the page
the purpose or function of the website
list of main webpages you will design linked from the homepage
list of possible secondary webpages you will design linked
from other webpages
advanced functions or features of your website such as forms,
dynamic behavior, Flash, dynamic layers.
This assignment is due on April 22-23 but you can expect
that we will be modifying and changing this as we continue through the
class.
Office hours: Tuesday - noon-4:00PM
Wednesday - 8:00AM-noon
Thursday - noon-4:00PM
Also by appointment and drop-ins
