Production
Production is the process of creating content, images, and populating
the Web site. We suggest that you create templates for one or two
sample pages for the core group to review. Once the group agrees
on page layout and design, then populate your Web site. The sections
below provide provide an overview of the process.
Site Management
Site Management is about files and folders and their location on
the Web server. The organization of your Web files and folders should
follow the same type of order as a filing cabinet. Create folders
and place similar file types items inside each folder to make it
easier to find things. For example, place all your images in one
file folder named images so it is easy to locate the images quickly
when you want to insert them on a Web page.
The individual responsible for building the Web site
should determine the file structure before they begin to populate
the site. They should also be familiar with the importance of index
pages. The example below reflects how the file structure is set
up in the English Department Webspace. In this example, notice
- The root folder is titled "engl" and it contains additional
folders.
- Images are in a folder titled "images".
- All the faculty and staff profiles (HTML pages) reside in a
folder titled "profiles".
- Photos for those profiles are inside the "images"
folder, in another folder named "profiles".
If you want to update a Web page, and you aren't sure where to
find the file in Webspace, first go to the page on the Web. For
example, if you wanted to update the profile for English Professor
Demas, the URL is: mtholyoke.edu/acad/engl/profiles/demas.shtml.
In Webspace, you would open the acad folder, then the engl
folder, the profiles folder, and there you will find the
page named demas.shtml. Note: you must have access
authorization to the acad/engl folder before you can make changes
to any files on the English department's Web site.
Review Progress of Web Development
It is important to set a date to reevaluate the full project timelines.
About a month before the scheduled "go live" date, meet
again to assess what is crucial to be completed by the time the
site is live. Due to time restraints, there may be parts of the
site that you will add later as the content becomes available.
File Size
Your visitors will lose patience if you site takes
too long to download. Therefore the file size for Web pages should
be keep under 75K. If your pages exceed this size, you may want
to consider splitting the document into additional Web pages as
well as reducing the number of graphic files per page.
Images are often the cause for slow loading Web pages. Graphics
should be optimized for the Web so that the file size is as small
as possible without losing the quality of the image you want displayed.
Another option is to display a thumbnail image which links to the
larger image on a separate page. If the larger image will be slow
loading, alert your visitor by including the file size with the
thumbnail link. If you are using Dreamweaver as your HTML editor,
the file size and downloading time are indicated at the bottom right
side of the window (as shown below).
File Names
- Avoid spaces in file names
When naming files or images AVOID SPACES. You can use an underscore
or dash to break up words if necessary; i.e.: file_mgmt or file-mgmt.
- Create simple file names
Consider naming HTML files the same as the title of the page.
Users often try to decode the Web address of pages to infer the
structure of Web sites. Thus, file name and folders should contain
descriptive directory and file names that reflect the nature of
the information space.
- Avoid special characters
Characters make it hard for users to type the URL and, in some
cases, pages will not be visible in a Web browser if there is
a character in a file name.
- Avoid using tilde (~) and special characters.
- Avoid any non a-z, AZ, or 0-9 characters.
- Use lowercase file names
Users sometimes need to type the URL, so try to minimize the risk
of typos by using short names with all lower-case characters.
This is a guideline and not a firm rule, except if you are in
Web CMS where no caps are permitted.
- Be careful of using dates in file names
A file name should remain constant. Therefore, be careful when
using dates in your file names. Consider using a date only for
archival purposes.
- Use clear and consistent with file names
- Clear: jan2005.html, feb2005.html, mar2005.html
- Inconsistent: 2005-january.html, 0205.html,
03_05.html
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