Dreamweaver Project

As described in this weeks lab, there are a wide variety of different types of Web sites, and as part of that same lab, you worked on some home pages for yourself. In this project, you will start working on an informational website. However, since Calvin only allows you one place to put webpages, you'll include this "informational website" with your home pages.

Reloading Your Site Definition

If you didn't create a site definition, go back and do it now. Then come back here.

Reload a site definition like so:

• Start Dreamweaver
• Select "Sites"-"Manage Sites".
• If you see your web site there already, then start using it. (The site definition is already loaded, and you must not reload it!)
• If your web site is not listed in the "Manage Sites" dialog, click on "Import".
• Select the site definition file you created before, and hit "Open".

This will reload the definition for your website, and you should see it on the right side of the Dreamweaver window.

Creating a Place for Your Informational Website

You don't want to create your informational website in the same folder as your home pages. So create a folder in your site. It's best to do this in Dreamweaver itself: right-click on the site itself, and select "New"-"Folder". Name the folder informational.

Rules for Naming Files and Folders on the Web

• HTML files must end in .html (or .htm if you're living in the 1990s and using Windows 95.).
• File names and folder names should be all lowercase letters and digits.
  • You can use capital letters if you really need to, but you don't really need to.
  • You must not put spaces in your file names (unless you can explain what %20 means in a URL and even then you can't).

You may want to rename some of your old files in your site now. Do this in Dreamweaver itself: right-click on the file, select "Edit"-"Rename".

The Informational Website

At the end of your final project, you will have published on the web a multiple page, hyperlinked, informational website that presents material for a research paper or essay. This week's lab has you started in Dreamweaver; this project will have you work on the structure of the informational website; next week's lab will get the site published (a setup for future publishing); your final project will finish the website with real content.

The Project Topic

The selection of the topic for your project is up to you. Pick something that really interests you, or a topic that you've already written (or will soon write) on for another class. You can use papers from another class to provide the content for this informational website.

If you have trouble finding a topic, then consider one of the following suggestions in the area of information technology:

• The digital divide
• The use of technology in education
• The relationship between online "blogs" and traditional print media
• Privacy and the Internet
• The nature of Internet addictions
• Copyrights and digital media
• Internet churches and evangelism

Your target audience is the Calvin academic community.

Building the Structure

As mentioned above, for this project, you need to build the structure of the informational website. You can base your structure on the structure in Prof Vander Linden's sample website. You do not have to structure yours exactly this way, but there are some key features that you should have:

• A Title Page. There is a welcoming page with an image and a hyperlink to the main contents of the site.
• A Navigation Page (Table of Contents). This is a central page that states the site's purpose (the original paper's thesis) and links to each of the content pages.
• Content Pages. Content pages present the primary content of the site. Do not base these pages on the page breaks in your paper, but instead base them on the structure of your document: an introduction page, a conclusion page, and all the content pages in between. Each should have an appropriate title and textual content. You should have at least three content pages (so a minimum of one additional page beyond an introduction and conclusion).
• A Bibliography Page. A page that contains your paper references. (If you didn't have any for your original paper, find at least three websites that offer up related information.)

For this project, you just need the pages themselves with the hyperlinks between them—no content necessary! (If you do put in the content, that just gets you finished with your final project that much sooner. But you get no credit for this project if you don't have the hyperlink structure!)

In short, this means creating the pages in your site and putting in the links that you already see in Vander Linden's example that aren't in his content or in his bibliography.

Remember the "Rules for Naming Files and Folder on the Web" above. Be sure to name your title page index.html (Vander Linden did, but that's hard to tell).

Don't forget to check how your pages look in a standard web browser, and be sure to check every link on every page. Dreamweaver is supposed to be WYSIWYG, but doesn't always produce the results you expect.

Read over the project specification to see what else will be required in this site by the time you're finished.

Submit!

Submit all the .html files (and image files if any) that you produced for your informational website through Moodle.