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- WWW site management
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-
- What is a Web site?
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-
- A Web site is a coherent collection of HTML documents. A Web site
- should incorporate the following:
-
- 1 - A systematic and logical design, so that navigation
- throughout the site is intuitive.
- 2 - Thoughtful and creative use of images and text formatting to
- give the documents a distinctive flair. Images should be as small
- as pratically possible to cut down on bandwidth.
- 3 - And last but not least, some interesting content!
-
- Web site creation
- -----------------
-
- 1 - The two most powerful programming tools are the humble pen and
- pad of paper. Planning your web site properly before putting
- fingers to keys is the first step in proper design. Create a drawer
- for your graphics, text, and HTML documents. Put these drawers into
- one more to represent the site.
-
- 2 - Design graphics items such as breaks, bullets and banners. Get
- a graphics convertor to convert Amiga ILBM/IFF format to GIF or
- JPEG. These are widely available on the Aminet.
-
- 3 - Using a good text editor, type the written content of each page.
- Remember to insert linefeeds (return strikes) at the end of each
- line, or AWebEd may have a fit. You may want to use the AWebEd
- editor or a dedicated editor.
-
- 4 - Now load up AWebEd. Using the default tools (and creating your
- own for specialised purposes) format the document making full use of
- headers, lists, and images. Add each document to the Hotlist.
-
- 5 - Once all the pages have been created, it is time to insert the
- hyperlinks. Use " locallinks " beween your pages and check that
- each of the links is working properly. Finally, insert links to
- other WWW sites using the " Hyperlink " item.
-
- 6 - If you are sure that the site is fully functional, it is time to
- transfer it to your filespace. Before that, however, it will be
- necessary to alter all of the local links for other documents AND
- images so that they will work on the different system. For each
- locallink, erase each path string EXCEPT for the name. Hence:
-
- file://localhost/work:network/website/documents/index.htm
- or file://localhost/work:network/website/gfx/break.gif
-
- becomes
-
- index.htm
- and break.gif
-
- Make sure that you backup your files before doing this!
-
- 7 - Now FTP your files across to your filespace. Your website
- should now be acessible to the outside world.
-
- 8 - The above system will work well for relatively small sites.
- However, larger sites will suffer from the problem that since all
- the files are stored in the root of your filespace, access times
- will increase. It is better practise to try to keep the filespace
- organised; for example, a directory for graphics, and so on.
- Remember that the paths for locallinks and graphics will have to
- reflect any changes in the re-organisation of the hierachy.
-
- Maintenance
- -----------
-
- Site maintenance is important, and oft neglected due to the
- tedious nature of the task. Without maintenance, however, the site
- will rapidly become stale. If you keep your hotlist updated,
- maintenance becomes less of a chore. Frequency of maintenance
- depends on the amount of time you can devote, and the frequency of
- which your site is visited. Frequent visitors will want to see
- something new every time! You can keep track of visitations and so
- on using counters etc. that are widely available on the Net.
-
-