How to build and publish a web site

Plan first

Request server space
To establish space for a faculty website, e-mail Steven Souders, GHC Webmaster, who will set up a space for your site on the GHC web server

He'll also send your logon and password credentials, and tell you the "path" to your site. For example: "http://www.highlands.edu/irc/index.htm" is the path for the home page of the IRC site.

Sketch out the site
While you wait for your new site information, sketch out what you want on your home page, decide if you want a page for each course you teach, and consider what you want the basic page design to look like.

If you like, see the Web Design section of this site for web site and page design guidelines.

Examine your needs
The method you use to build a site depends on your needs. Go to the "Design" section for some options. Whichever design option you choose, however, you will need a way to build your pages.

The easiest and best method is to use an application designed specifically to make web pages. Doing this allows you to work in a familiar design-environment, while producing easy-to-read and quick-to-display web pages. It also allows you to edit and update your site easily.

Design considerations

 

To develop a web page or site

First things first! To develop either a simple home page, or a site with a home page, graphics, and links to more pages, use SeaMonkey Composer, part of the free Mozilla SeaMonkey suite. Composer is an easy-to-use, what-you-see-is-what-you-get HTML editor (HTML is the language that makes web pages work).

One advantage of using the the SeaMonkey suite is that you also get the Mozilla browser. This allows you to switch between the page-design view (Composer) and the browser view (Mozilla) with a single command.

Seamonkey is easy to use, and there is a good and short tutorial. You need to get Seamonkey and follow the steps in the tutorial, which show you how to open, edit and format a web page. Seamonkey Tutorial.

To develop a site on a Mac

To develop and publish a home page and additional pages using a Mac (not a Mac running Windows), use iWeb, an excellent and free web-publishing application available on all Macs.

iWeb has easy-to-use and well-designed site- and page-templates that makes preparing pages and sites very easy. Example of site produced with iWeb.

To develop more advanced web sites

To develop and publish more extensive or complex web pages and sites, use a web-editing application like Dreamweaver. You can download a 30-day trial version of Adobe Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver was used to make the site you are on.

To develop a single web page

It is possible to convert a Word document to a web page. However, web pages generated with Word are hard to edit, slow to download, and unnecessarily complex. This method is NOT recommended.

However, if you insist on using Word, use it only when you want a single page and keep it very, very simple. Avoid all formatting —no indents, bullets, tables, pictures, etc.

When you have prepared your page in Word, save it as "Web Page Filtered," and if it is your home page, make sure the file name is "index.htm" (this is very important!).

Even if you have avoided any formatting, you should submit the web page to the Word html Cleaner site, which will strip out the unnecessary Microsoft code when you upload your page. Directions are on the site.

Build

Home page
Using SeaMonkey, Dreamweaver or iWeb, prepare your home page. Before you name and save the home page, you have to set up a single directory (a folder) on your PC where you will store each page and graphic in your site. Never move anything in your site out of this directory. Do not move the directory when you have set it up. Read on...

Set up site root directory
Set up a folder for your site on your PC, where ALL the pages in your site must be saved. This is your site "root-directory."

DO NOT move pages or anything you want on your site (graphics, sound files, movies, etc) out of the site root directory. You can name the root directory whatever you like, but it makes sense to call it by the site's name (GHC Faculty Site, for example).

Do not chage the name of the root directory.

Save the home page
Save your site home page file to the site root directory as index.htm

This is very important.

When a person visiting your site enters the site URL (http://www.highlands.edu/irc, for example) in a web browser, the browser looks for a page named "index.htm" and displays it.

Do not rename or move the index.htm file from the site root directory on your PC, or the site root-directory on the GHC webserver after you upload it.

View pages in browser
You need to see how your home page looks in a browser. You can open the index.htm file you just saved to your PC and view the "local" version (local being the version on your computer). If you are using Mozilla's Seamonkey suite, and you built your page in Composer, just switch to the view from Composer.

Open a web browser and navigate on your PC to the index.htm page in your site root directory.

Inspect the page in at least 2 different web browsers in case your page looks different in IE and Firefox, for example.

Open and inspect all other pages you created on your site. Test links if you have any.

Modify or edit your site pages locally (i.e. on your PC) before you publish pages to the remote location (i.e. the GHC webserver.

Always test everything locally before you publish to the remote location.