This tutorial has been developed to aid students, staff and faculty at New Mexico State University in their efforts to create their own web sites. It is intended for this and no other use.

The first step in developing your personal web site is to determine the goals and objectives you have for the site. To do that, you need to answer the following questions.

• Who is the target audience?
• Will they access the site over high-speed connections or slower dial-up connections?
• Is your root page going to include frequently changing information, or will it merely provide links to other pages?
• Will it include résumé type information?

After you have answered the above questions, you are ready to design your web site. Some design considerations include:

• the site should be quick to load, easy to navigate and present its information in a straight-forward, clean format
• large (multi-screen) pages take time to load, but with some forethought, they can be made relatively easy to navigate
• small pages take much less time to load, and are easy to explore, but subsequent linking to subordinate pages can be slow and frustrating to the viewer
• if your web site is large enough to warrant multiple pages, a tree structure is recommended because it is easy for both you, the developer, and the view to understand and use
• the use of a consistent layout across all the pages of your web site will increase their readability, and may make them easier to maintain
• position the most important contents of each page as near the top as possible (the viewer will not scroll down the page if the opening material doesn't generate sufficient interest)
• design for a 640 x 480 resolution screen (higher resolution screens will simply see more of your pages without scrolling)
• check your spelling and grammer (multiple times)
• provide a mechanism for sending email to you from within your web site
• although graphic image files (GIF and JPEG are the preferred formats) can be relatively large and, consequently, slow the porcess of loading your pages, their use where appropriate can enhance your web site and make it more appealing to the viewer
• specifying colors in your text is generally not a good idea, unless you are using backgrounds on your pages that necessitate the use of "non-default" text colors

Once you have designed your web site, you are nearly ready to begin the development process. "Nearly ready" because you still need to decide where your web site will reside, and then prepare that location. Most internet service providers (ISPs) as well as many commercial enteprises provide space for web sites. If you are an NMSU student, your web site can be placed on your UNIX account (at no additional cost) - all you need to do is complete Lesson 1 and Lesson 2 of Computing & Networking's Creating Your Own Homepage on-line tutorial.

After you have selected and set up a location for your web site, you can begin the development of that site with one or more of the following types of development tools.

• text editor - you write all the text and the accompanying HTML code
• word processor - you write and WYSIWYG-format the text, and let the word processor's HTML converter write the HTML code
• HTML editor - you write the text and, with a lot of point-and-click assistance from the editor, insert the HTML code
• page creator - you write and WYSIWYG-format the text, and the creator writes all the underlying HTML code

Writing your text and HTML code using a text editor means that you must know (or learn) HTML. While Lesson 3 of Computing & Networking's Creating Your Own Homepage on-line tutorial provides a basic introduction to HTML, A Beginner's Guide to HTML -- Part 1 introduces you to all the HTML that most people ever need. Macromedia's Web Center site is another excellent source of information on HTML coding. One of the easiest ways to learn HTML is to find a site that is designed something like the design you have created from your web site and then simply view the source of that site. Viewing a web page and its source text/code at the same time will allow you to see and more quickly understand the connection between the two.

If you have a word processor such as Corel WordPerfect7 available, you may want to consider writing and formatting the pages of your site in WordPerfect and then doing a "save as" to convert them into HTML format. This works particularly well when you are developing pages that are very text and/or table oriented.

HTML editors such as DerekWare's HTML Author (freeware), Paul Lutus' WebThing (freeware), Brooklyn North Software Works' HTML Assistant (($90.00), SoftQaud's HotMetal ($159.00) and Mike Sutton's EdWin ($35.00) are very powerful, productivity enhancing tools - provided that you already have a working knowledge of HTML. They are not particularly good web page development tools for the beginner.

Page creators such as Microsoft's FrontPage 97 ($149.00), Sausage Software's Hotdog ($30.00 - $99.95), Boomerang's Internet/Intranet Design Shop ($69.95), and America On-Line's AOLPress 1.2.2 (freeware) provide WYSIWYG editing of text and graphics, spellchecking, text customization, etc., that make the development effort reasonable straight-forward.

A "small" list of web page creators and HTML editors has been compiled by Tom Maghiery - if you see something you like, let him know that his efforts are appreciated.

When developing your first web site, simplicity should be your guiding principle. As you gain expertise (and confidence) in web site design and maintenance, you can begin to enhance and expand your site

If you are a student who is, or soon will be, looking for a job, or just want the world to know a little about your professional side, one of the first additions to your web site should be a résumé. If you don't have any particular on-line résumé format in mind, there are a great many alternatives from which to choose out on the internet that can be viewed and copied, including the one at the end of this link.

The use of backgrounds/textures, graphic images, icons and ticker tape are just a few of the tools that you can use to enhance the look, feel and even usability of your web site. Although it is relatively easy to use a search engine to locate such tools out on the internet, a few popular sites are listed below.

It is important to remember that your web site will NEVER be finished, and, unless you are vigilant, it will ALWAYS be out of date. Doing it right takes time and effort.

Including an indication of the last update date on all the pages of your web site will both tell your audience how current they are and remind you of how long it has been since you last maintained them.

Good luck and have fun!

Last update: 10 March 1997

copyright © 1997 - College of Business Administration & Economics