Building Your Own Web Site

Building an Internet Web site is not only for your own ego. Sharing your special knowledge is a way of contributing to the community. You have an opportunity to create something and show it to the entire community, to express an opinion and present it publicly. Something else you need in order to build an Internet site is courage. Anything you put into the content of your Web site is potentially exposed to millions of surfers all over the world - children and adults, men and women, all races and religions, people with many different views and opinions.

As in many things in life, building a Web site also requires some planning. Planning takes time, you know! I understand just how you feel. I understand that you are eager to see your Web site ready quickly and you are saying: "Let's get on with it. Who needs all that planning? And even if I do need it, why not just do it as I go along…." Many people have thought the same thing and started to push ahead right away, as fast as possible.

Some of the difficulties they encounter are:

The building process got stuck, and not because of insufficient knowledge or inadequate tools
Or
The building was never completed - what seemed to be small, quick and simple at first, turned out to be a long drawn-out, endless process.

One way or another, it didn't come out like they imagined or like they wanted. So why not let other people's experience help you, people who discovered that NOT planning the site properly is the main reason for running into problems and difficulties.

Checklist for building your Web site

Choose a subject for your Web site.
Collect and prepare materials (text, images) on your PC.
Design your Web site.
Build your own Web site on your PC.
Upload your Web site onto the Internet.
Maintenance: Add, Update, Delete, Change...

Choosing a subject for your Web site

Here is some advice to help you decide mainly what NOT to publish on your own site:

Never display any content (images or text) that you would not be willing to show your Mom. Choose content (images and text) that you would be proud to have your mother see.
Never display any content (images or text) that you would not be willing to talk about in school or at your local youth club. Make sure you can talk openly about the content with your friends.
Never display any content that could be considered as libel, slander or defamation (if you do not know the meaning of the last three words... ask your parents).
Also...
You must be aware of any copyrights regarding material that you use on your Web site. Even if you are under 18 years old and/or are not familiar with the law, that does not give you the right to disregard copyrights.
The content should be legal and in keeping with the spirit of the law, otherwise you could end up being flooded with legal claims that could land you and/or your parents in serious trouble for the rest of your lives and could even leave you completely broke.

Apart from this, the Internet is a free and open environment where you can publish anything that comes to your mind: text, images, video clips and audio clips that you made yourself and anything else that can be produced on digital media.

The subject and content of a Web site are more important than the "packaging" (the way it looks visually). Refer to the summary at the end of the chapter for information on what keeps users coming back to your site. A site with no subject and no content is meaningless. That would be like making a really attractive dust jacket for a book that contains only empty pages. Even if someone were to pick up the book in a bookshop and flick through it because the cover caught the eye, it's doubtful whether anyone would want to buy it and take it home. An attractive Web site without content may impress people who see the home page, but once they go into the other pages they will only be disappointed, and of course no one will want to surf in that site again.

A good Web site is one that surfers find interesting and that they will want to make return visits to. A site does not have to include every subject under the sun. It can concentrate on a single, very narrow and specific subject and still attract surfers to return to it. Let's say, a site about cultivating a particular species of rare flower. It is obvious that not every surfer on the Web will be interested in exactly that flower, but the site will appeal to anyone who is especially interested in the subject of gardening and growing flowers, or to surfers who need information about a particular flower (such as students). Those people will be very pleased to find a site like this, since the chances are that Web sites about that flower are quite rare, as rare as the flower itself. So maybe that site will not be visited by a million surfers, but no one can claim that it is not entitled to a place on the Internet, or that it does not fulfill the purpose it was created for, or that surfers who visit it find nothing of interest there.

Making a good personal Web site poses a serious challenge. A personal Web site is usually one where the site owner tells us about his life, his hobbies and anything else he does or is interested in. But a site that includes everything about you since you were little, pictures of you and your family and major events in your life is of interest only to people who know you personally. It is doubtful whether anyone else will visit the site, and even if they do, the information in it would have to be totally amazing or really funny if they are to spend more than two seconds in this kind of site.

It is better to make your personal site about a favorite hobby or some special talent you have, that other people will find interesting. It is worth thinking about who you would like your "target public" (the people who will visit your site) to be and design the content to suit them.

It is very advisable that the subject of the Web site is something you are really interested in and that you understand, a subject that you can say something about. That is, a subject that you can write a text about and that you can back up with interesting material (images, audio or video clips).

Don't be tempted to build a site about something you are not really familiar with - you don't want to put your ignorance on show for the whole world. A subject that doesn't really interest you will make you abandon the site once you have finished it and gotten past the challenge of actually building it.

Since the main problem facing Web site builders (like you) is the content (which we will refer to later), I recommend that you choose a subject that you already have some material on.

As a school pupil you must surely have done several projects already on some topics. Now is the time to shake the dust off those school files and choose one of those projects that you can present digitally - on the Internet by building and publishing a Web site.

Collecting and preparing material

As soon as you have selected the subject for your Web site, it is time to collect the materials for it. The materials that are used to make Web sites are primarily text and images, combined with various files (software, audio or video files, etc.). Collecting materials for a Web site is a lot like collecting materials for a school project. But because you are using electronic means to present this project, you will be able to use materials that you would not be able to use if you were only typing up a print copy.

If you decide to make your site about a subject that you already did a project on in school, you probably used the word processor (for example: Microsoft Word). If you did, this makes building your site much easier, because you can copy material from your school files and paste it into Notepad.

If you have chosen to build a site about a particular subject, surf other sites on that subject. You can use search engines for this by typing in key words for a search on that topic. Check out the content of the sites that come up and see what is good in them, what is bad and what is missing.

Plan your own site to include valueable information from those sites and collect more material to cover what is missing. But don't copy material from any other site without permission. You can translate material from sites in other languages, but first you must read what is written in the Restrictions on Usage (Terms of Use page) in that Web site.

You will need graphics, which you can either prepare yourself or download from the Internet. Your own PC contains some software (Paintbrush) that will enable you to create simple and attractive graphics. But for more impressive and professional results you will need graphics software like Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro (they are the most popular in the field). There are also sites that offer collections of graphics free of charge.

To find images (buttons, bars, icons, pictures…) that are free of charge and that you can make free use of, go to one of the search engines and type in free graphics or free images. If you find a picture you like there:

Read what is written in the Restrictions on Usage (Terms of Use page) in the Web site that you want to copy from.
Position the cursor on the picture, right click with the mouse and select Save Picture As... Save the picture in the picture folder of your Web site.

You can collect material at random or with a definite plan in mind, but eventually you will have to make a map of your Web site or a content list, and divide up the materials between the different pages of the site. Just as you would like to get an A grade for your school project, you should aim for the highest standard in your Web site too. But one of the differences between this and a school project is that on your Web site, if something is missing or you are not satisfied with the results, you can always add to it and improve it even after the site is completed.

Even if you have the greatest content and the most wonderful files to go with it, you will want to present it well. Make sure that there are neither content errors nor spelling mistakes in the texts you include in your site, and that the grammar is correct too. It is a good idea to run a computer Spell Check on the texts, but you should also print out all the pages and proofread them yourself. It is easier and more convenient to read them on paper than on the screen. You have a better chance of finding mistakes this way.

Design your Web site

The first thing that surfers will notice on your Web site is the design (the "look and feel"). Before they read even one word, they see the site design and that is why this subject is no less important than content. A site must offer surfers not only interesting content, as explained above, but must also provide a pleasant visual experience.

The site's appearance should be appropriate to its content. There should be some connection between the content and the way it looks. For instance, the design of a site commemorating the events of September 11th will be conservative, its graphics will be moderate, it will not have small pop-up windows that distract attention and it won't contain advertisements. Otherwise the surfer will feel that the message transmitted by the text and the message transmitted by the visual design are incompatible.

On the other hand, on the Web site of a clown who performs for birthdays, everything that is unsuitable for use on a memorial site may be used - and more. On a clown's site, everything should be colorful, happy, surprising and it should be accompanied by music and animation.

There is no such thing as "no design." Even a site consisting of black letters on a white background has a design.

The design of the Web site should suit its content, including files that accompany it (images, video and audio clips, etc.). Images should match the text. Do not use pictures where the surfer will have difficulty understanding the subject of the photograph.

Now that you have the materials (text and images), you need to plan your Web site. The structure of your first site should be simple. When you were little you used to do puzzles with only four pieces. Now that you are a teenager you can do puzzles with 500 pieces, or even more. It is the same with building a Web site on the Internet. Start with a simple structure.

Justin's personal Web site, which you built in the course of this book, is structured as follows:

Content

So logically, it looks like this:

homePage.html

links.html

books.html

friends.html

about.html

This is a "flat" structure with links from the menu to each of the pages.

At least at the initial stage, keep to a similar flat structure for your own site too. Your site may contain more than the number of files indicated. Regardless of the number of pages, the main idea is to keep it simple.

Building your own Web site on your PC

Now that you have all the materials (text and images) and you have designed your Web site, it's time to build. You can use the pages you already built in Justin's Web site to help you. Just copy some of the files - or all of them if you prefer - from the justin folder to the new folder that you just opened.

Let's say that you want to build a site about a baseball team. One of the pages will be about the players. For every pitcher, catcher, infielder and outfielder you want to show an image and some text. For that purpose you can use the books.html or friends.html Web pages from Justin's Web site. Replace the images, change the text and…you have a Web page!

Use the book as a reference manual while building your Web site. Go back to the stages you need to be reminded of, whether they are choosing a color, creating a table, adding an image, formatting a text, etc. Now, that you are familiar with the book and with Justin's Web site you can say: "I want to do that", then locate the appropriate page(s) in the book and see how to do it.

Applying minimal loading time

Try to keep your site "compact" - this means using small images and small image size. Images that load onto your computer quickly will take much longer when your Web site will be on the Internet. A 500Kb picture that loaded onto your PC in what seemed like the blink of an eye will be much slower on the Internet. The slow loading time will irritate surfers and they will not wait for the images to load. Instead, they will move on to another site. That is why you should keep your images small. A 10Kb image size is reasonable. You can have more than one image on any page, but bear in mind that you should not surpass 70Kb total image size per page. You can add some larger images and let surfers know that they will have to wait until they finish loading.

Upload your site onto the Internet

Part II deals with this subject.

Maintenance

The Internet is a great big cemetery for Web sites that were discarded by people who built them. I hope this is not the fate that you wish for your own Web site. When you walk around a shopping mall, you notice that window displays in the stores are changed regularly. This should be the case with your site too. Every so often (you will decide how often: daily, weekly or by-annually), you should do something to vary your site if you want people to come back for a return visit.

You must show returning surfers something new. The least you can do is change the design: color, position of headings, etc. You can also add and/or update content and offer new services.

Summary

The only way of the measuring success of an Internet site is through repeat traffic by loyal users. In order to do this you have to remember that these are the four things that users want more than anything else:

Quality content
Ongoing updates
Minimal loading time
Easy, convenient use

Now - go ahead and use the information you learned during the process of building Justin's Web site and build your own Web site.

Good luck!

Part I

Part II