There are several ways to begin designing a home page:
1: Learn how to do it.
Here are the exciting alternatives:
- Search the Internet for web design resources. There are literally tonnes of authoring tools available on the WWW free for those who know how to download them.
- Learn from books. This is one of the best sources of knowledge. Buy a copy of a good book. Usually, there is a CD-ROM accompanying it with examples.
- Attend a course on home page design. Check whether the Skills Development Fund can be used to offset some of the fees.
- Use a browser of version 3 and above which has a "Save in HTML" function to develop your home page.
- Use an open tool software, for instance one from MS Office 97, which allows you to save files in html
(hypertext markup language).
2: Organise your data - the information about yourself if it is your personal home page, or your school.
Organise the structure and flow of the pages that you want to have.
3: Select the photographs, drawings, cartoons and any other graphics that you want to include in the web page.
Be careful of the size of the graphic file as the bigger the picture is, the slower it is going to load on the Internet.
Few people are patient enough to wait that long for a picture to unfold.
4: See if you have suitable sound files in the .wav or .mid format to give your web page some sound effect or soothing music.
Again, check that the file size is not horrendously large for it may take eternity to play.
5: Estimate the number of hours you need for each of the above. Fix a schedule for your activity.
6: Draw up a flow chart (or a branching one) showing how each page is going to be linked.
Consider various types of link: internal page links and those on the WWW.
If you know how to mind-map,
here's one good use for it.
7: Well, if you can come up to this stage, you are well on the way to designing your own home page, your institution's or your school's.
Good luck!
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