User Guide

your content is! One way to help you organize a web is to storyboard it.
This can involve creating one 3” x 5” index card for each proposed web
page and arranging them in logical category piles. Then connect the cards
with the string to show how pages will link together. You may prefer to
just sketch ideas on a piece of paper or a white board, too—whatever
works best for you.
As a general rule, you want to keep the number of general content cat-
egories between five and 10. Again, the purpose is to make it easy for
a visitor to locate the information or service they want.
• Resources: When you identify resources that will help you with your web,
split them into two groups: people and material. On the people side, who
will supply content? Who will be responsible for maintaining the technical
aspects of the site? Who will supply artwork and design help? Who will
edit and manage the content? Who will test the site and how often? On
the material side, do you have access to existing graphics, stock photos,
clip art, or company logos? Can you re-purpose existing content from
newsletters, annual reports, or event flyers? Do you need other software
besides FrontPage, such as an image editing application, to help you build
your web? Creating a web involves a lot of different disciplines and it’s
unrealistic to think you won’t need help somewhere along the line. Take
time now to identify resources that can assist you when necessary. Assem-
bling a competent team up front will prevent panic later! This is also a
good time to assign “ownership.” Get firm commitments from any and all
potential web contributors.
Legal assistance may also be useful to advise you on Internet-related
laws, such as drafting copyright, privacy, and usage policies.
• Location: Two things here. First, where will you develop the web?
FrontPage webs can either be disk-based or server-based. Disk-based
webs, like the ones you will use in this course, are stored locally on your
hard disk or some other storage device (floppy disk, CD-ROM, network
drive, and so forth). Ordinarily, disk-based webs are used for developing
simple webs because that’s when the focus is on creating and formatting
page content; simple webs rarely require a server’s support.
As your webs become more complex, you will want to develop them on a test
Web server. Logically enough, these are called server-based webs. Though they
can be more complicated to set up and slower to use (because you connect to
the server over an Internet connection), server-based webs can take advantage
of server technologies to provide support for interactive processes like message
boards, data collection and display, and so on. As a result, developing a web
on a Web server will allow the web to behave more “realistically,” as it would
on the World Wide Web.
Disk-based webs are also great for creating a backup copy of a web.
LESSON 1
FrontPage 2002 – Level 1 8
Reference Material
Please Do Not Copy