About NDCRT

Site News

Site Map

Hosted Sites

Acceptable Use

Quick Reference

Data Reference

Offsite Links

WA Emg Svc Map

Authors

Emergency News

Legal News

Search Engine

Computer Support

Conferences

SFD Honored Members

Feedback

Where are we going with all of this information? I promise not to overload you with anything more than you need to get started on the path to telling your story to the world.

Since we've explained what the web is, how HTML works, given you a little exposure to what HTML looks like, and given you some guidelines regarding design of web pages, we're going to move on to the planning stages, before we discuss some software issues.

Planning Stage
What is the story you want to tell people? If you have some experience with writing a report, then you're in pretty good shape. If not, then you've got a little work on your plate. Start with the basic question: What do I want to tell the world? After you've figured out what your basic and essential statements are, and written the ideas down on paper, start thinking from a new perspective: If I were visiting a site about this idea, what would I want to see the site designer make available to me? Write these ideas down, too. Now, massage your list(s) into a set of generic information which gives an orderly view of your ideas in a matter of hierarchy -- from most to least important issues and ideas. If you have a lot of ideas (I can only hope that you do) then you can start mating up ideas which seem to carry a common thread.

Now that you've organized your thoughts, we're ready to move on to stage two. Take your grouped ideas and lay each one out at the top of a sheet of blank paper. Using the NDCRT site as an example, we'd end up with our first blank piece of paper with the caption "About NDCRT" at the top. At this point, you're ready to begin filling those pieces of paper with ideas. What is the content you want to convey under each of these headings? Sketch and write it in so that you have a working document which starts to mirror your thoughts. Think about the flow of information which is going to be presented and start making notes about how information will fit together, from page to page and from your pages to other sites on the internet.

By the time you're done laying out these documents, you should have a better idea of how your pages will look and can start laying out graphics on the pages in your hands. This will serve to complete most of your fundamental design work. Laying this foundation and visually sorting out your problems before you encounter them on the computer screen will help keep your site clean and orderly -- and stop you from paying an all-night visit to the local bar!

Ok, let's set aside the documents you've created. Now its time to discuss software issues and solutions.

I happen to prefer to use a Macintosh, but I keep a PC around on my desk to test what web-pages will look like to the rest of the world, and as a sophisticated game machine. My wife refers to the box as my five-thousand-dollar-Nintendo. At any rate, we're going to cover both platforms and their software requirements.

First, we need to decide what we're going to design our web-pages in. You've seen what raw HTML code looks like and, more than likely, you're not as crazy as I am... Personally, I enjoy editing the raw code because I get better control over the look and feel of my site. As a beginner in the design forum, you'll likely want to go with a package which makes your design project easier.

For beginning web-page designers, I'd recommend a simple program named Adobe PageMill, available for the Mac and PC. PageMill's strength and weakness is its simple interface. There are much more complex programs available for the more sophisticated user, including packages like NetObjects Fusion and Adobe's GoLive Cyberstudio. If you have time to learn a fairly sophisticated interface, these are the better programs available. Many people seem to be purchasing Microsoft's FrontPage as a web-design package. Although there are a number of features I like about FrontPage, we do NOT implement the FrontPage Extensions on our servers due to substantial security concerns. Further, FrontPage has not been good to Mac users.

*****STOPPED HERE*****

All contents copyright 1996 - 2005 by Bob Nelson
No reproduction without prior written permission
This page was last updated 1596 days ago. There have been 6428 hits to this site since 8/7/99.
Made with a Mac. Built with BBEdit.