How to Build a Web Page, How to Build a Web Site

FEDERALLY FUNDED SITES:
Learn what all schools and federally funding agencies must know and provide on their websites.

• Learn All About School Web Sites
  Who Is the Audience? What should be there? Specific Guidlines and Goals, What are the legal requirements. You are legally responsible to make it accessable to the blind, find out how.
• Put your school site into the historic online master registry.

DESIGN BASICS

• Be Aware of who you are desinging for - Stats
• Information Architecture Tutorial
  Information architecture is the science of figuring out what you want your site to do and then constructing a blueprint before you dive in and put the thing together. Designing a Web site one page at a time tempts the creation of a 'spaghetti site': one that lacks good internal structure or organization.
• The basics of web page creation
  If you are interested in using Netscape Composer, there are many tutorials out there, but in the interest of recreating the wheel, we've designed some tutorials for the teachers in our district, with the intent of being no more than a screen or two long, cross platform, and just a little at a time.
• Type Setting advice - The things you need to know
• Hire the the professional because there is MUCH MUCH more to building a site then what you see on the computer screen.
• "MANIFESTO" at www.cluetrain.com written by some people with interesting thoughts about the Internet.
  
• TEN GOOD DEEDS IN WEB DESIGN When you make the decision to move course materials to the Web, you may need some help in designing easy-to-use Web pages. Dr. Jakob Nielsen of the Nielsen Norman Group, points out the many mistakes Web page creators make that pose problems for readers. In a recent column, "Ten Good Deeds in Web Design," he presents positive strategies for increasing your site's usability.
  
• Writing for the Web a great list compiled by usuability guru Jakob Nielsen: The short summary and the writing style guide are especially good.

DEVELOPMENT TOOLS FOR KIDS

Lissa Explains LISSA's ONLINE HTML GUIDE FOR KIDS is a great site built by an 8th grader to teach other kids how to build Web sites. The design is beautiful and it's well-written. It's a must see for both girls and women alike. It's a great guide for beginner tutorial, especially if you are a grownup.

LEARN HTML - TUTORIALS

 

DEVELOPMENT TOOLS FOR ADULTS

• Free Applications and Tutorials
• Donate or Get Free Computers
• OPEN SOURCE FREE CLASSROOM COURSEWARE TOOLS
• The Webalizer is a fast, free web server log file analysis program. It produces highly detailed, easily configurable usage reports in HTML format, for viewing with a standard web browser.
• Get reliable statistics of the average time it takes users to download your pages.
• Streaming Content Locate Royalty Free images which are inexpensive.
• internet Symbols, Smileys and Emoticons
• ASCII Art Sources

 

508 TOOLS TO TEST YOUR WEBSITE CODE

• Usability, TEST code 508 Confusion and 508 compliance
• Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 This is a US law that requires all United States Federal Agencies with websites to make them accessible to individuals with disabilities. Many US corporations have also applied them to at least part of their sites. There is also a strong ethical argument for not closing off sites to those with disabilities also see rules from 2001 There are many aspects to 508, but only one actual requirement . . . if the government doesn't comply with 508, lawsuits can happen. Included in that document are technical standards for software and Web-based applications, and functional performance criteria (http://www.section508.gov).  For a discussion of the standards for creating accessible web pages, you might read the guide Web-based Intranet and Internet Information and Applications by the Access-Board, a Federal agency committed to accessible design.
• Cognitive Design considerations
• A good way to ensure that sites will work for as many users as possible is to (a) design sites to the HTML, CSS, DOM, and other standards, (b) to test sites with common browsers that implement these standards well, and (c) to tweak the sites so that they work well enough for antique browsers still in common use.
• Watch the video that explains what Screen Readers are and find out what you need to consider for web users who are visually impaired.

COMPLIANCE

• W3Schools A free HTML validator, it checks compliance with W3C standards downloadable applications.
• Usablenet Submit a URL and test up to 5 pages of your site free. The software automates some of the more technical aspects of usability, for example checking HTML code complies with W3C standards.
• Bobby A page checking utility http://www.cast.org/bobby and / or http://validator.w3.org
• Colorblindness and websites and this one
• SCORM - Sharable Content Object Reference Model In January 1999, the Executive Order 13111 was signed tasking the Department of Defense (DoD) in leading the development of common specifications and standards for technology-based learning across both federal and private sectors. Following the signing the initial draft version of the SCORM was developed and began to integrate and connect the work of these two sectors to support the newly formed ADL Initiative. Through the work of SCORM, ADL incorporates many emerging standards and specifications into one common reference model.

USABILITY

• WEB SITES THAT SUCK 2006 10 worst
• Site Usability 101 - Rants about bad site design - warning there is humor and cursing, it's well worth watching.
• UsableWeb A usability portal rather than a news site. It hasn't been updated much in 2002 but there are still an awful lot of good links on here. It covers 'information architecture' also, a close relation (some would say a sub-set) of usability.
• WorldWideWeb Consortium
• Web Tools NIST tools WEB METRICTS test bed.
• Yale Web Style Guide A site from Yale University that offers detailed 'How To' guides to implementing easy to use web sites.
• Useit.com -Jakob Nielsen PhD is a web useability expert Top Ten Web Design Mistakes of 2005 (October 3)  The oldies continue to be goodies -- or rather, baddies -- in the list of design stupidities that irked users the most in 2005.
  Design for the users: users want Fast.
  A very easy way to distinguish a well-designed site from a useless one is to measure the time to download the home page: it must be less than 10 seconds to satisfy basic human factors guidelines
  Only if the site is easy to use will you stay there.
  If USERS can't figure out how to use a site, then their solution is not to read the manual. Their answer is to go to another site.
• Get reliable statistics of the average time it takes users to download your pages.

EVALUATING WEB SITES

• http://lib.nmsu.edu/instruction/evalcrit.html
• http://www.unc.edu/cit/guides/irg-49.htm

SUBMIT YOUR URL TO SEARCH ENGINES

• A Standard for Robot Exclusion - Develop Meta Tags and your Robots.txt file
• Check the Robots.txt file to see if you did it correctly.
• Submit your site manually to the top search engines.
  Alta Vista - http://www.altavista.com or the add a url link
  Excite/AOL Netfind/Magellar/WebCrawler
  Infoseek/Go
  Lycos
  Northern Light
  alltheweb - http://www.alltheweb.com or the add a url link:
  http://www.alltheweb.com/help/webmaster/submit_site Lycos - http://www.lycos.com or the add a url link:
  http://insite.lycos.com/
  Direct Hit - now Teoma - now Ask Jeeves
  http://www.directhit.com/util/addurl.html
  https://sitesubmit.ask.com/Main/login.js

 

 

GET THE GOOD STUFF FOR FREE
FREE WEBSITES FREE SITE STATS	GET FREE COMPUTERS	Free Online Office
Free ISP	FREE Paint Program	Free Art
MetaTag Builder	FREE Tutorials	Fonts/Sounds Database
Free Email EMAIL in other languagesJunglemate	How to Add Audio	Arts Database
Get Your Free Education Learn applications & get the Code	Filtering Programs	Create Free Online Poll

WHERE TO GET A FREE HOST FOR YOUR WEBSITE

There are dozens of great places to store (host / upload) your single webpage OR website.

FREE CLASSROOM COURSEWARE TOOLS

• OPEN SOURCE FREE CLASSROOM COURSEWARE TOOLS
• Web 2.0
• Donate or Get Free Computers
• FREE WIKI FOR THE EDUCATOR CLASSROOM
• The Webalizer is a fast, free web server log file analysis program
• UserActive Media: Learning By Doing
• SearchEngineWatch has a page devoted to metadata that has great links
• Web Manager's Reference Center (DL SunSITE)
  The Berkeley Digital Library SunSITE builds digital collections and services while providing information and support to digital library developers worldwide. Best catalogued taxonomies of WEB developmental tools Library
• They are up there flying around taking pictures - View your house as photographed from space or an airplane. It's called the U.S. Geological survey and you can access the photos on the internet for FREE.
• internet Symbols - Smileys and Emoticons
• ASCII Art Sources