I'm Neil Verplank, and I'll be working with everyone over the next 4 weeks and 8 postings to help you build a web site. I imagine there's a pretty broad spread among you about what you know, and what you hope to accomplish. So, below is a quick overview of what I plan to cover - please let me know what you'd like to get out of the class that I'm not covering, and ask any questions now so that I'll be sure to hit the topics on everyone's mind.
I've been designing and building sites for almost 7 years now, from single pages to entire corporate entities, so I have a pretty good perspective on what goes into a site, and reasonably decent experience with tools and operating systems. You can learn a bit more about me here.
I've also taught An Introduction to Design for Electronic Media at Columbia College here in Chicago, and all those class notes can be seen here. This was a semester long college course, and covers a great deal more than we will here, but I will probably refer you at different points to lectures and notes on that site, so you might take a quick look. There's also an excellent section on reading that will provide a number of book suggestions if you want to delve more deeply into web site design and construction.
I'm assuming that everyone's goal is to build a decent web page or site for themselves, and come away with at least a minimal understanding of the tools and techniques you'll need to get a web page onto the internet, so that's the basis for these postings - again, if you have something specific you'd like to cover that you don't see mentioned here, please let me know. I plan to post 8 classes, generally on Tuesdays and Fridays in the a.m.
Homework, when it's assigned, will be due one week after assignment.
8 classes / postings
1) Why / What are you doing?
2) Web specific content
3) Designing graphics and text for the web
4) Tools and how to use them
5) Building an actual site
6) Getting a url
7) Posting and maintaining your site
8) Site review and how to get traffic
For those who have not used a listserv before: you've been adding to a mailing list, through which you can send and receive messages from the class. Listservs can be configured different ways; some allow one way communication from the moderator to the subscribers, some also allow replies to the moderator, some allow replies to go to everyone on the list, which is how our list is set up.
More information on this list is available at the corresponding web site:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BuildingaWebSite/
Most listservs can be configured directly via email, some relevant emails for this list are:
Post message: BuildingaWebSite@yahoogroups.com Subscribe: BuildingaWebSite-subscribe@yahoogroups.com Unsubscribe: BuildingaWebSite-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com List owner: BuildingaWebSite-owner@yahoogroups.com
Sending a message to one of the above with your regular email as the reply-to address will accomplish the desired action. Again, you should be able to do any of these things via the web site as well. All messages sent to the list are archived, and can typically be obtained either by sending a query email to the list, or more easily by visiting the corresponding web site at Yahoo. You can usually tell the list how to get your email - one at a time (its default setup), or in an archived format (all list messages in a day in a single message, all list messages from a week in a single message, etc).
Finally, my postings (not the entire message archive, which is available through Yahoo) will be available on line at classes
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I realize this is a course on how to build a web site, but the first and most important step is to give serious thought to what you're about to do and why. This affects how you'll go about the actual work, your motivation, and your ultimate success; too frequently people leap into using tools without any serious thought about what they're trying to accomplish.
So, what are you trying to accomplish? Key to answering this question it to think about who you expect to see and use this site. Is this site a portfolio; a place to point people with whom you're having a conversation about potential work? Is it a site intended for marketing, that is, to get you new work and new contacts? Or is it a news-oriented site, intended to keep people informed about what you've been up to? Is it an interactive site? That is, can people "do" things on the site, or post questions and answers? Or is it merely an informational site?
The best thing you can do is put yourself in your user's shoes -- who do you envision seeing this site? You probably know something about what kind people this user group (or groups) is made up of, so what kinds of questions are they likely to have? The first step towards building a site is to identity the category or categories of users you expect to have.
Once you've got user categories, you need to identify the questions these categories of users will have. One way to start is to write down the questions that you get asked the most. One thing a web site can accomplish is to act as a "gatekeeper" (or secretary if you prefer) -- it can provide answers to the questions that you find yourself being asked on an ongoing basis. "What do you charge?" "What's your experience?" "How long does a project take?" "What are your professional credentials?" "Can I see samples of your work?" "How can I contact you directly?" "What types of work do you take on?" You of course will know what kinds of questions you get, but those are some obvious examples. It's helpful to also think about the order people ask their questions - some sets of questions are "flat," that is, it doesn't matter which one you answer first. Other questions only arise after you've answered a previous question. One way to look at your web site is as a means to answer the "same old questions" so that by the time someone contacts you, they have a good working knowledge about what they want to know.
You'll note that these are questions, not informational points. That is, you should be thinking about what the motivations are for your users, what they want to know, as opposed to thinking about what you feel like saying. This is why I suggest questions, as opposed to an outline. Although it's possible for someone to blindly stumble onto your web site, there are over 2 billion web pages out there! It's far more likely that someone will find your site in one of two ways: 1) they are searching the web with a particular goal (question) in mind, such as: "I need an editor;" or 2) they know about your site already, because you or someone you know told them about it. My experience is that the majority of your visitors (that are likely to contact you, that you care about) fall into category 2, a small minority into category 1), and very very few into the "blindly stumbling" category. So, you know something about your users already - they're looking for you, or someone who does what you do. And you also know therefore that they have some fairly standard questions they want "you" (your site) to answer.
You can't write down too many questions at this stage - don't limit yourself based on your goal, or what you think you know about the web - write down questions questions questions. It is (as you know) easy to edit (as one editor friend says, "weed 'em and reap"). If possible, I suggest you run these questions by potential users you may know. Getting some feedback about what you're trying to answer on the site before you build the site will save you a lot of trouble later.
Once you're confident you've got all the likely questions identified, write a brief answer to each question - a place holder or identifier (don't bog down in answering the questions at this stage). This will help you identify questions that are in fact the same, and probably point out some new questions of which you hadn't thought. I also find it helpful to write down the different categories of user, and then map the users to the questions - maybe a left hand column of user types, and a right hand column of questions.
Finally, you want to create a map of these questions. Group your questions by category. Generally, you don't want to present a user with too many options at any one time. So, decide who is going to be using your site, and determine what common questions they all want answered. Your goal at this point is to create a map; it's an information map that shows what questions are answered where. A good rule of thumb is to present people with no more than 7 choices at any one time.
One habit you may need to break is to use an outline, because outlines are inherently linear. People read linearly, but they don't browse the web that way. On the web, you can leap from one place to the next, and you usually have an array of choices as to where you can go next. I find therefore it's best to think graphically - write down your questions in a hierarchical array or tree. Each line of questions represents a layer of the web site, most likely a web page. Each page can point to multiple other pages. The map of your web site should look more like a Christmas tree than a linear list.
So this is your goal for Friday - to identify the groups of people who will use your site, the questions those users will have, a brief description of the answers to those questions, and a map that shows how the users, the questions and the answers are related to each other.
If you've already built your site, or built an outline, or think you know what you want to say, you still should go through this process. It's all too common for people to write down what they have to say before thinking about what it is the end user actually wants to hear.
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Friday we'll go into detail about how to create content for the web, which is very different than creating content for any other medium.
Again, we've entered into this class a bit blindly on both sides, so feel free to identify specific things you all want to know that I may not have planned to cover. I plan to write the posts shortly before posting them, so that the class content is as flexible and responsive to your needs as possible.