Things You'll Need
Assignments and Class Links
Links we've used
- The Web Style Guide (online site)
- Learning Web Design (Companion Site)
- Web accessibility guidelines
- Caching Tutorial
Basic tools
Writing and Editing
Design and CSS
- A List Apart (Online magazine about web design)
- StopDesign (articles and tutorials)
- CSS Beauty (gallery of sites designed in CSS)
- See style sheets in practice using CSS Zen Garden
Usability
- Check for effects of red-green color deficiency
- Another site for checking red-green color deficiency
- A formal usability report of hotmail
Tutorials
- W3schools (useful tutorials)
- A useful XHTML tutorial
- A tutorial that uses both XHTML and CSS
- Web caching tutorial
Web tools
Meta-sites
- CNET (lots of computer resources)
- Zdnet (great software downloads)
- HTML Goodies
Web hosting and doman hosting
- Free site hosting http://www.biz.nf/
- Get a cheap domain name and free hosting at 000.webhost.com
- Cheap domain names
- Fatcow.com (cheap deal for monthly unlimited hosting plus domain name)
- JustHost.com (Another cheap deal)
Search-engine optimization
-
Optimizing your site for search engines with Submit corner
- Google: How Search Engines work
- What is Search Engine Optimizaiton?
- GSitecrawler: Free software that will generate a sitemap
- Search engine optimization (SEO) starter guide (PDF)
- Google tips on SEO
Software
- download Winzip (a compression/ decompression utility you'll need to install many downloadable files)
- download HTML toolkit for PC or Textwrangler for Mac
- download WS-FTP
- download Filezilla FTP software
- download Free Photo (a graphics utility)
Images
Rights-managed and royalty-free
- IStockPhoto
- Getty Images
- Jupiter Images
- Veer
- Nutrockers free tabs, buttons, backgrounds, navbars, etc.
Clipart sites (watch out for pop-ups)
- Microsoft Clipart
- 1 Free Clipart
- Clipart Castle
- Clipart.com (membership fees)\
- Open Clipart
- Educational Clipart
Image optimization tools
- ProJPEG by BoxTop (This Photoshop filter is free now; click on download)
Client sites
Content
- Make your own licensing agreement
Wordpress
- Download and install Wordpress
- Instructions for putting your own template into Wordpress:
- Design your template in Dreamweaver. Make sure that your image links are "absolute" or external URLs, not relative URLs (for example, <img src="http://maryadams.site40.net/images/bg.jpg" alt="background" />.)
- Code for Wordpress loop (copy this code into your template's main content area. Note: this code includes the heading. You can leave it out by using this code instead).
- See it at work: Code for my template with Wordpress loop
- Save your template as index.php. Save it and an external style sheet called "style.css" (I also use an inline style sheet) into the folder wp-content/themes/mystyle. Upload the whole mystyle folder to your site. Note that your template should have a link so the client can log in to the site (e.g. http://maryadams.site40.net/wp-login.php)
- Log into your wordpress site and select a new theme or template.
- Optional but recommended. Under Settings / Permalinks, change the Common Settings so that pages are named after the post name (e.g. http://maryadams.site40.net/sample-post/
- Create your home page (not a post) using the new template. It will be named after title you give it.
- Under Settings / Reading, direct the front page to be a static page, and select the home page you made as the front page (see illustration.)
- Make the content pages (not a post) using the new template.
- Then make sure your template menu correctly links to these new content pages (you'll need to check the permalink of each).
Extras
Scripts
- Google search for your site
- Javascript Source
- Javascript Kit
- Java File
- Dynamic HTML Library
- Easy breadcrumb script (javascript)
- Another Breadcrumbs script (dhtml/ css)
- Menu script (dhtml / css)
- Google's Feedburner (makes any feed—for example, from a Facebook page—into a URL)
Templates
Pay
Free
Blogs and RSS feeds
- Wordpress
- Integrating Wordpress into your own site
- Five-minute Install process (some hosting sites like Fatcow.com will install Wordpress for you)
- Squarespace
- Blogger
- RSS Tutorial
- How to code your own RSS feed
- Add an RSS feed to your page
- Google's Feedburner (makes any feed—for example, from a Facebook page—into a URL)
Wikis