Scenario 9 - Creating a Web site

ISPs usually provide space on the Web for their clients to have their own Web site. Physically this space is an area of a hard disc on one of the ISP’s Web servers (computers). Writing for the Web is now fairly straightforward because you can avoid having to write in the special hypertext mark-up language (HTML) used by Web browsers. Word-processed documents can now be saved in HTML format ready for uploading onto the Internet, though often making Web pages look the way you want using this method is harder than using dedicated software. Programs such as HotMetal Pro allow pages to be created in different editing modes, akin to desktop publishing (DTP). There are also simple Web-authoring programs available, particularly targeted at pupils in schools, such as SiteCentral from TAG Developments. Although these products undoubtedly make creating pages easier than ever before, as someone responsible for maintaining a Web site it is worth considering learning some elementary HTML and using a text editor to create some simple pages. When things go wrong with these tools, as they sometimes do, it is useful to know a little HTML to look for obvious mistakes.

A basic HTML primer can be found at: www.htmlprimer.com

A more comprehensive explanation of HTML can be found at: www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/General/Internet/WWW/HTMLPrimer.html

Whichever Web page creation tools are used it is good practice to proof pages off-line using as many different browser programs as possible. The most common browsers, Internet Explorer and Netscape, are available for free, and can be found on many computer magazine cover discs.

Web pages created off line are then sent to an ISP where they are stored, to be made available on the ISP’s server for anyone to see with a Web browser. The process of transferring files to the ISP’s server is called File Transfer Protocol (FTP). Some commercial programs have inbuilt features for sending or uploading pages to your Web space by FTP. However, the free or shareware tools such as WS-FTP or CuteFTP provide all the features necessary to upload Web pages. FTP tools generally work using a simple interface allowing both the local hard disc and the Web space on the ISP’s server to be accessed simultaneously.

Teachers might want to create a Web site to publicize their school, share resources that they have found useful, or celebrate the achievements of their pupils. In creating their own Web site pupils have the means of publication for a new audience, involving them in a wider community.

The publication ‘Making the Web Special’ describes a project investigating the use of the Web in special schools. It can be found at: www.sed.kcl.ac.uk/special/makingweb.html
Once a Web site has been written, the owner might want to consider joining a Web ring, which links sites with similar themes. More details can be found at: www.webring.org

Example 9

A teacher wants to make a Web site for his school. The agreement between the school and its ISP gives them space on the Web and an address.

The teacher explained how he went about the task.

“We needed to think about the content and structure of the Web site – what we wanted to include and how the reader was going to move from one part to another. We decided to open with one digital photograph of the school and a menu of icons for the other pages – the school prospectus, a map, and an area for publishing the pupils’ work. We wanted simple, uncluttered pages without ‘frames’. Although we like the way some schools use graphics, we did not want to have too many because they take so long to download. We were also concerned about pupil safety issues so decided not to include photographs of the pupils with names attached. There is also the issue of gaining the pupils’ permission (and that of their parents) to publish photographs on the Web. In our view, some of our pupils do not have sufficient understanding of what the Web is to make asking their permission a valid prospect. There is no longer any need to know how to write in ‘Web language’ because we can compose pages in a dedicated program.

“A useful resource for us when we were planning our Web site was the publication ‘Making the Web Special’.

“To begin designing the site we drafted some key pages such as a news page and a page linking to pupils’ achievements and examples of work. We also made a list of resources we needed to collate, such as photographs and word-processed documents.

“We used our digital camera to take a photograph for the first page of the site. We downloaded it from the camera to the computer but it was too large for the front page. We used PaintShop Pro to resize the picture and saved is as a JPEG, as this is the best image format for photographs.
“Any images we used we saved in a separate folder on our hard disc, so all the image files would be stored together. We also created a separate folder for the main sections to keep the Web pages organized as the site develops.

“We created our pages using HotMetal Pro which has an inbuilt preview mode so we could check as we went along what our pages would look like in a browser. As well as being able to type straight into the program; we were easily able to copy-and-paste text from word-processed documents that we had previously saved such as our school prospectus, our newsletter and examples of pupils’ work. When we had made some Web pages we were happy with, we previewed them in Internet Explorer and Netscape to make sure they looked the way we wanted in more than one browser.

“We decided to use WS-FTP to upload our Web pages to our ISPs server as the software was provided free of charge by our ISP. We configured the software with the FTP address for our Web space and our user name and password. Once we were online we connected to our ISP’s server with WS-FTP and uploaded our pages.
“We then checked our Web pages online with our browser by typing in our unique Web address provided by our ISP.

“We decided that a sensible way to manage the site would be to update it at the same time as we publish our next school newsletter.”

Key skills and equipment

The key skills for the above example are:

• planning and writing Web pages
• using File Transfer Protocol
• operating a digital camera and saving the images to disc

The key equipment is:

• a computer linked to the Internet
• browser software
• Web page creation software – HotMetal Pro
• FTP software – WS-FTP or HotMetal’s built-in FTP publishing function

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