Getting Started
This section of the UA Web Guide presents a step-by-step plan for starting a Web site from scratch or refurbishing a current site.
- Review Relevant Information
- Develop a Plan
- Develop Your Web Site
- Post Your Site on the Web
- Get Your Site Listed
Review Relevant Information
- UA Web Policy
- This UA Web Guide, including the Web Tutorials and Resources
- Faculty Resource Center
- Web Publishing — HelpDesk
- UA Visual Identity Guide
- UA Editorial Style Manual
Develop a Plan
- Discuss your site with others in your area and with members of the intended audience.
- Contact your area's computer support staff, your college, school, or department Webmaster, and/or a resource from the UA Web Resources list for advice.
- Determine your goals and objectives.
- Determine roles and responsibilities.
- Determine what content you have in place and what you will need to develop.
- Make an outline, then gather and organize your content. Save your outline as a basis for the site's navigation when you begin the development process.
Develop Your Web Site
Your production strategy will depend upon a number of variables, including your skill level, available resources, and the scope of the Web site. In any case, the following considerations must be addressed at this stage of the development cycle:
Developers are encouraged to use the UA Web Templates. Pages may also be started from scratch, from other templates, or otherwise as long as the end result meets all Minimum Design Standards.
Though Web sites can be constructed with any text editor, most developers use wysiwyg (what you see is what you get) software that provides a visual workspace in addition to access to the page source code.
Wysiwyg editors range from "giveaways" to high-end commercial products such as Macromedia Dreamweaver, Adobe GoLive, and Microsoft FrontPage. (A note to FrontPage users: some servers on campus, including the "bama" server, are not equipped with the "FrontPage extensions." Therefore, some server-side functions created in FrontPage, such as hit counters and e-mail forms, will not work on those servers.)
HTML-Kit is a great free HTML editor and development tool. A selection of free HTML editors is available at www.thefreecountry.com/ecentricity/htmleditors.shtml.
A word of caution — strict reliance on the visual workspace of any wysiwyg editor is generally a bad idea. Developers should know at least basic HTML and CSS.
Post Your Site on the Web
Once your Web site has been developed, you must procure storage space on a Web server.
UA students, faculty, and staff are eligible for a "bama" Account, which includes an e-mail account and 2 megabytes of disk space for e-mail and Web pages. More space may be available for department and organization Web sites upon request. Refer to "bama" Account information on the HelpDesk site for information on how to establish, maintain, and use a "bama" Account.
Files are generally transferred to a Web server using an FTP program. WS-FTP (PC) and Fetch (Mac) are available from the Network & Computing Support Software Library. Some HTML editors feature built-in FTP.
Get Your Site Listed
Contact the Office of Web Communications at 8-2440 or by email to request a link to your site from the main UA pages.