Planning a good Web page

Planning a Web page depends a great deal on what you are trying to accomplish. Because putting up a Web page for a department or office imposes additional requirements, I will bend the course towards this goal. There is still a diverse set of choices to be made, and anyone developing a Web presence must be aware of these choices. The easiest way to understand what is, and what is not possible on the Web, is by surfing it yourself. Anyone who wants to make information available on the Web should be adept at retrieving it.

Once you are familiar with the Web in general, it is time to outline what types of information you want to make available and how much. These can be difficult decisions. Many departments and offices have a plethora of information just aching to be put on the Web. Many departments have brochures and advertisements that would lend themselves perfectly to the Web. It can be a difficult job sorting through all of the available materials and choosing what should go up, and what should not. Making the decisions as to what should be changed, what can be enhanced, what can be directly copied, etc., can take a long time. This is all in addition to creating the pages themselves, which is also no easy task. That is why I recommend working in teams of at least two people, if at all possible.


Teamwork

Two teams should be created to maximize the likelihood of making your Web page top-notch. One team should be responsible for the content, and one should be responsible for the HTML. By dividing the workload this way, the team that is in charge of gathering the content can focus on doing just that, and the other can focus on learning HTML and writing the actual Web page source. Both teams should be responsible for design.

The team responsible for writing the HTML should make it very clear to the other team what is, and is not possible for them to do. Start simple, things can always be enhanced later on. You will see many pages that have "under construction" on them. Personally I believe all Web pages are always under construction, so this statement is unnecessary, and should be avoided.


Flow

Smooth flow is one of the most important thing about Web pages, and it is all too often neglected. Especially if you have a lot of information, it is very important to make the pages and information flow together in a coherent manner.

Pages with paragraphs of information that look like this are distracting to read, and impossible to navigate. Sometimes you cannot even get one clean sentence of information read without having a bunch of links distract you. It is similar to trying to watch 3 TV programs at the same time, each showing you a minute's worth of the show before switching to the other. Bleah.

I know it sounds contrary to the overall principle of the Web, but try to use links sparingly. Avoid having two links in a document that point to the same thing unless it is something like an example to look back on continually. Name your links clearly, and give a description nearby if necessary. Give people a chance to read your information and rest their mouse button finger.

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Dick Piccard revised this file (http://www.ohiou.edu/pagemasters/class/html2/plan.html) on October 25, 2000.

Please E-mail any comments or suggestions to acatec@www.ohiou.edu.