Creating a Web Site
Learning objectives
Realise the importance of site mapping
a website.
Know what should be included on a website to create a consistent style.
Be able to understand how using multimedia
affects a website.
Know how testing a website after creating it is essential to ensure functionality and quality.
Decide which of the below are essential when creating an effective web site.
what information needs to be included
how many pages you need
the type of information that will go on each page who your audience is – who you want to read it. When creating a web site you need to decide…
In order to do this well you need to produce a storyboard.
You also need to decide:
the order that the pages should be in
which pages link together to take you from one to the other.
To do this effectively you need to produce a site map.
Home
Shopping Recipes Special
offers
Having decided on the content and order of your site you then need to decide which software you will use.
There are two types:
a text editor – where you type in every instruction and the detailed content of each page using HTML
commands. An example is Notepad.
web authoring software which generates the HTML commands for you. Examples are Front Page and
Dreamweaver.
You could combine both types:
use web authoring software to design your web pages then when viewing the pages go into View Source
where you can see your HTML commands and make your own adjustments there.
In order to do this you will need to understand how HTML works.
No place like home
The home page is the first page that visitors to your website will see.
Therefore it is very important to ensure that:
the page is quick to download (no large files in it) there is a relevant title in a legible font and colour it is clear what the purpose of the website is
the layout is attractive and not too complicated
there is a menu with links to other sections of your website.
Below are some real examples of home pages.
Any titles, headings and text must be kept consistent
(the same) throughout the web site by:
keeping the same font and size and limiting the font colours to no more than two or three.( You can create a style sheet to ensure this happens.)
keeping backgrounds consistent
keeping main objects like logos and navigation buttons in the same place on each sheet
using consistent colours for hyperlinks and clicked hyperlinks.
Forward and
back buttons are always the same and in the
same positions.
Logo –
consistently in the top-right-hand corner of every slide.
Slide number Titles are the same font,
colour, and size.
Copyright – consistently
Graphics, animation, video and sound files are not stored as part of each web page.
The web page has a frame to load these objects into when the web page loads.
This means these bigger files only need to be stored once.
It also means that you can’t move those files or
rename them, because they won’t be found and loaded if you do.
Keep all the files in the same folder as your
Use multimedia files sparingly as they can take up a lot of memory and slow down the website when
downloading.
They can also be very irritating if you use too many. Ask yourself if there is a purpose for including any multimedia: how will the page be enhanced?
If you have to use big files, load them from a button on the page so people only load them if they really want to and the page still loads quickly.
When you have completed your website it is very important to test it.
Test all the hyperlinks links on every page.
Then ask someone to test the website for you. They may find mistakes you missed.
Check the spelling, punctuation and grammar carefully.
Get someone else to proof read it.
Some software allows you to check download
Creating a storyboard is very useful for planning layout.
Creating a site map is essential for planning links between pages.
HTML is the language used to create web pages. Every website has a home page.
Consistency is important when designing a website. There are a number of ways to navigate around a website.
Multimedia can be added to any web page, but it increases download times.
