Where do you begin when you want to create a home page for your school? You've heard it is easy with one of the drag and drop HTML editing programs such as Adobe Pagemill or Claris Home Page. You have also been told you can construct one in about 5 minutes.It is a little more entailed than what you have heard or been told. There are a few things you need to know first before you jump into making a home page. With any good project, organization and understanding of the end product is very important.
Think of a home page as if it was a book or magazine. In a publication you are targeting a specific audience. You want your work to be eye catching, easy to navigate, and interesting enough that your readers will return. Let's take a look at some examples.
Design Elements of a Home Page
Fairland Elementary School - Montgomery County, Maryland
Greentown Elementary School - North Canton, Ohio
Hopkinton Middle and High Schools - Contoocook, New Hampshire
Poudre High School - Ft. Collins, Colorado
Wai'anae High School - The Island of Oahu HawaiiSpend some time deciding what main links you want to create on your front page. You might want to include a mission statement, parent area, staff directory, activities, or calendar. Storyboard your Web site so you will understand how everything fits together.
Answer these questions.
1. Who are your customers?
2. What information do you want to provide them? Make a list.
3. Do you need to have an area for parents?
4. How will the information be organized?
Before you begin you should collect photographs for scanning and type your content information in a word processing program. Use courier 12 without any formatting and save it as an ASCII text file. This will make it easier for you to tag, especially if you use an HTML editing program.
Keep all of your files in one folder. This will make it easier to link files and eliminate errors when you load the page to the server. The biggest mistake beginners make is in the linking process.
Name files in lowercase for simplicity. This will help eliminate problems when loading files to a UNIX server. UNIX is case sensitive.
Keep file names short and meaningful. The rule of thumb is 8 characters plus the file extension. There should be no spaces.
Save Text Files:
filename.html (Macintosh)
filename.htm (DOS & WindowsSave Image Files:
filename.gif
Be sure you have a graphics program that allows you to save your images in the correct format.
Save your front page as index.html.
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