The Introductory 1-2-3 Steps of Web Development
This page covers the Introductory 1-2-3 Steps of Web Development:
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plan (storyboard);
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create linked web pages; and
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publish online.
This tutorial assumes that the reader has spent a number of hours on the
Internet and on its World Wide Web and is familiar with the Web's most
basic conventions. These same steps will appear again in another web page
as a part of the
Comprehensive View of Web Development.
Effective web design is really no different than planning a paper, video,
newsletter or slide show. First, you need to collect and organize your
ideas. This means that the composers should have thought for a while about
a topic or topics, recorded their ideas and those of others and determined
the nature of the audience for their creations. Then the developer should
choose a presentation format (such as a theater, newsletter or web site)
and layout the sequence or sequences by which others will find their thoughts.
Second, the creator inserts the collected information into this planned
structure and does so in an appropriate but attention grabbing manner for
the intended audience. Third, composers move their creation to a medium
or setting by which their audience can encounter their work. This public
sharing might be thought of as publishing (newsletter), conferencing (a
meeting to trade ideas), showing (video) or live performance (music). A
web site, a collection of web pages, might include all four.
1. Step One: Plan
One effective way to plan a web site is to work
with a team to develop a storyboard. This storyboard can be made in
many ways:
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posterboard and post-it notes.
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drawing objects on a sheet of paper.
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a draw or paint program that lets you create design objects and move them
around as needed for later editing and printing. Further, the file that
you creat can easily be turned into a web page that can serve as a map
of your web site. The Draw application within Clarisworks on either Windows
or Macintosh applications is an excellent tool for this purpose but there
are many others such as Photoshop, Paint, PhotoDraw, and more.
Create a storyboard relevant to your audience:
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Your Computers in Education course storyboard
needs to include some required design elements which included selected
assignments. Other design elements are up to you. (This storyboard web
page was created in Clarisworks.)
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Teacher or instructor storyboards
might include assignments, lesson plans, unit plans, tutorials, grading
criteria for important assignments, relevant web site addresses, calendars
for important events during the grading period and semester, tutorials,
sample test questions, study guides, teacher contact information (school
phone, fax, and teacher email address) and student creations. If your information
might go on a chalkboard, poster or printed handout, it is also a strong
candidate for a web page.
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Business sites require product and price information, entertainment or
news that generates repeat visits, contact information, and so forth.
Web page designers may also benefit from the collection of bookmarks that
you have been building which are relevant to your topic and class interests.
The pages you bookmark may suggest design ideas for your topic that you
may want to incorporate in your own web design.
2. Step Two: Creating Web Pages with Different Editing Tools
There are many software applications that can be used to develop web
pages. Since the version of Netscape 3.0 Gold, a web page editor called
Composer has been built in to Netscape. It is just a word processor with
some additional features. There are other more powerful web editors, but
Netscape Composer can take you a very long way. Beginners should stick
with just one web creation tool at first, but it is worth your time to
check out the competition.
3. Step Three: Publishing Your Web Pages
Publishing a web page or pages generally means electronically transmitting
what you have created and stored on your diskette to your own storage area
on a distant computer that runs web server software. Such server software
"serves" web pages to requesting computers across the Internet. Every Web
Server will have its own special policies and commands for uploading files
into its system. Beginners should stick with one Web Server until they
thoroughly understand its procedures, but over time web creators will find
that it is easy to keep web files on many different Web Servers located
around the world.
Assuming that you already have a designated web server, use appropriate
software to transfer your files to the online computer of your choice.
If you do not have a place to publish your files, consider the options
below under the heading Select Your Web Host.
University increasingly provide students with Web space. For example,
Western Carolina University's Vax computer provides 1 megabyte of storage
space. The trade-off for larger free server space is commercials or advertisements
(adv.s) inserted in the top of your web pages. I chose those listed below
simply because they offer the largest storage areas for free and I have
heard about them more than others.
Select Your Web Host
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There could easily be other better systems for your needs. To check out
the competition, see Yahoo's
list of other free web server sites. Each web server site has its own
rules and as well as its own arrangements for uploading files to their
web sites. Also, you could easily have more than one free account, using
WCU's Vax as well as other systems. The problem will be remembering each
system's different way of doing things.
Remember that a more Comprehensive View of the
Web Design Process is also available when you have a firm grip on this
3-step web process.
