Planning Your Web Site

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Planning Your Web Site

• Doug Proutydprouty_at_cccoe.k12.ca.us
• Contra Costa County Office of Education

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Planning Your Web Site

• Goals for your Site
• Layout your Site
• Folders and Files
• Design the Look
• Navigation

• Plan and Gather Assets
• Test your prototype
• Fill in the Content
• Test and Submit

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Goals for your Site

• What do you want to accomplish byhaving a Web
  Site?
• What are some of the potential ancillary
  outcomes?
• Who are your audience/users?
• Realize Your goals will affect your design,
  navigation, delivery, etc. Keep it simple and
  focused.

Layout on Paper
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Layout your Site on Paper

• Use a product like Inspiration or Visio
• Use a large sheet of paper PostIts
• Arrows for links
• Room to grow

Folders and Files
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Folders and Files

• Organize your folder structure and file naming
  convention
• Decide on folders and sub-folder relations
• Separate your images in to two folders
• Web server looks identical

Design the Look
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Design the Look

• Based on goals, audience, files you can start
  to work on your design.
• Use a graphics program like, Photoshop,
  Fireworks, etc. to mock-up your pages
• Choose a few colors to be your primaries
• Maintain consistency and simplicity on each page

Navigation
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Navigation

• Make it obvious and keep it consistent throughout
  your site
• Visitors should always know where they are and
  how to get to the top layer
• Search and Site Map pages help
• Provide a feed-back form or email link

Plan and Gather
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Plan and Gather Assets

• Before development
• Create navigation buttons
• Collect clip art http//dgl.microsoft.com
• Organize content like handouts, lesson plans,
  images, etc.
• Plan and design templates for similar pages
• Move images to Library items

Test Prototype
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Test your Prototype

• Get a sample up to view and test
• Add content later
• Check site on different computers, screen
  dimensions, and browsers
• Try your navigation
• Check download speeds

Fill in Content
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Fill in the Content

• Add content to your web pages
• Format and bring in images
• Build links to internal content
• Build links to external sites/content

Test Submit
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Test and Submit

• Check links and images
• Ask colleagues and others to check it out
• Submit URL to search engines

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Thanks

• Doug Prouty
• Contra Costa County Office of Education