• Administration
  • Syllabus
  • Objectives
• Lessons
• Lesson 1
  • Notes
  • Exercises
• Lesson 2
  • Notes
  • Exercises
• Lesson 3
  • Notes
  • Exercises
• Lesson 4
  • Notes
  • Exercises
• Lesson 5
  • Notes
  • Exercises
• Lesson 6
  • Notes
  • Exercises
• Lesson 7
  • Notes
  • Exercises

CSC 112 - Lesson 3 Exercises

Making a list and checking it twice

By now you should have accumulated most of the content that you need to redesign faxswitch.com into modemswitch.

You should have two lists for assets:

1. What you have.
2. What you need.

Organize your information into folders on your site making a notes (a web page) of what you have done and what you still need to do.

Typically webmasters design a "project site" to manage the progress and assets of a web site project.

A project site usually consists of several sections:

• Plan - the business plan or proposal for the site.
• Schedule - the time line with milestones (dates) in which the sections or content is to be completed. A check list is usually supplied. When items are completed, they are crossed off the list. If multiple people are involved on the project, each person's responsibilities are spelled out and specific tasks are assigned to these individuals.
• Assets - consists of two lists: the list of all assets that you have to make the site with and another list of all the items you need. The items from the "need" list should move to the "have" list until all assets have been acquired.
• Designs and Templates - include any designs, templates or mockups that you have been toying around with. Put all of your practice stuff here. Be sure to include some type of index so you can easily click on each one of the designs to review your porgress and to get ideas from.
• Links - Related links to this project. May include several lists including competitors, style example sites (for inspiration), industry links research and additional content (including trade associations and other industry related businesses), media links, as well as other related categories specific to this project
• Keywords - keywords and key phrases that search engines are likely to use to find your site. Use these in designing the site do it's friendly to the search engines when it is completed and submitted.
• Software or programming requirements - any software that must be written or purchased.
• Budget - the financial breakdown of the project needs.
• Working Model - as the site progresses, you shoudl have have a website developing. In the beginning, this is often a site with no design but all the links are connected to try out the navigation before the navigational design is fully implemented.
• Next step - future plans and enhancements along with an appropriate time frame for implementing them. This could also include marketing plans.

The project site need not be fancy and you need not put a lot of time into the design. You need not incluse all of the sections above and you may add additional sections if you wish. The idea here is informational and organizational. The project site helps you to stay on schedule as well as help you to organize your information and plans.

By now you should also have an idea of what type of navigational system that you want to use and which buttons will be supplied on each page. Design ideas should be formalizing. Possibly you have a few "sample" designs that you have been working on. Add these to your project site to the design section.

After all of the planning and asset gathering is done. You will make at least one template to put content into and to design your site around. Since everything is organized, design issues can be tested and implemented relatively quickly.

Your assignment is to make a project site to organize your information and then post it to the server. Gathering and organizing content is actually one of the hardest and time consuming parts of creating a web site. By using a project site, you efforts are optimized and you should end up with a better site in the end, on schedule, and focused on your goals.