Module 3: Creating and Publishing Web Pages
Readings
Creating and Publishing a Web Page
The purpose of this module is to develop your technical skills in using the web to publish materials.  You'll both be gaining a  mastery of the basics of creating an HTML document and  practicing publishing your page and all of its elements to their correct location. 

The tutorial in Chapters 16 to 20 of your text will step you through each of the elements of a web page.   Another quick tutorial is available at Build and Publish a Web Page (in an hour or less). (The publishing information is specific to the UD web space.) Take advantage of the links for each chapter at the Internet Literacy website; you'll find lots of helps, examples, and useful graphics to insert in your pages. There are lots of other tutorials all over the web as well.
 
Page Content
Since you are using this to try out your page building and publishing skills, any content would be appropriate. If you've never done a page before, try creating and publishing just to get the hang of it. You may want to create the resume as in the example in the book.

If you've published web pages before, you can use one of your existing pages for this assignment, but make sure you've got all of the elements listed.

As we move through the course, you'll be publishing pages to the web regularly to submit your assignments. I've set up templates to organize your pages. This would be a good time to personalize those pages and publish them to your own space. You can use the directions on page 247 of Internet Literacy, "How to Clone a Web Page", to start using those. Make sure to change to your name. :-)

If you are setting up your page at one of the free sites, you may come across some "easy editors." While they are fine to get started, they won't do the trick for this class. You will be able to create your first page but you won't be able to do subsequent assignments using that kind of editor. Take the time now to learn the others ways of creating Web pages.

When the template is in place on your site, you can link your new web page to the main page.
Publishing the Page 
Your account on the UD computer systems gives you 4MB of space to publish your pages.  Full directions for publishing there are at Publishing Student WWW Pages on the University of Delaware's Web Page Server. 

Of course, your web space at UD will not be available to you once you leave the class, so you may want to publish somewhere more permanent.  There are many places that offer such space but most now require pop-up or banner ads.  You can see a list of free web page hosting sites I've tried out at http://www.udel.edu/sine/pageplaces. You may also want to check out other directories, such as About.com's 100 Best Free WebSpace Providers.

Special notes

One of the previous students of this course remarked that there were 3 pieces of advice she would have liked when using this module. They are:

  1. create the page using Frontpage, Netscape Composer, Word or similar software.
  2. Be sure to save the page frequently as you are working and pay attention to where you've saved it.
  3. Follow the directions for publishing at whatever site you are publishing to. These directions are site-specific so you need to be careful. For example, if you are using Geocities, the directions can be found at xxx .
School Considerations
While this week is really about publishing your own pages and getting the mechanics down, it's good to start thinking about the issues associated with teacher, class and school websites. The Levine article will provide a number of pointers for sound policies but be warned that the views on this are changing rapidly as the technology evolves. The article from Technology & Learning is a useful resource for planning how to publish student work.
Related Assignments
  1. HTML and Publishing

    Throughout the course you will be building a web site to collect your submissions. A template for this is provided but you can vary it any way you see fit or build your own from scratch. For this assignment, you'll be publishing two pages that are linked to each other. One of the pages will be your assignment template.

    The other page you will be creating to demonstrate your web building skills. This could become your own home page. The content doesn't matter, but it should have these elements:

    • Title
    • Text using more than one font or style
    • List (ordered or unordered)
    • Several links to useful web information
    • A link so that people can e-mail you comments
    • One or more graphics
    • A table used to layout information on the page
    • A link to your assignment page.


    There is no requirement as to where you can publish, but it needs to be accessible on the Web. You'll find some suggested places to publish at www.udel.edu/sine/pageplaces.

    When your page is online, go to the WebCT Discussion Forum and enter the URL for whichever page you consider to be your main page as a reply to the thread for this assignment in the Discussion Forum. Check to make sure that clicking on the link will really bring us to your page. YOU WILL NOT GET CREDIT FOR THIS ASSIGNMENT UNTIL THE URL IN WEBCT GETS US TO YOUR PAGE.

Copyright © 2002 by Pat Sine.
Send comments to sine@udel.edu