Getting Started

WEAVING TALES, WEAVING WEBSITES:
Websites 101

Getting Started

Before you open FrontPage and begin creating your site, it's a good idea to first do some thinking about the general structure of your site.

Sketching Your Site's Layout

Every site begins with the opening main page, the home page. On this page, you might choose to have some basic welcome information. From there, decide what other pages you'd like visitors to be able to navigate to. If you have a brochure, you might use some of your brochure section headings as ideas for appropriate "second-tier" pages.

Here is one possible structure. Yours may look different, based on how you choose to plan your site.

"Parent" and "Child" Pages

Each "child" page can also be, in turn, a "parent" page. For example, in the above diagram, the Programs page is a "child" of the Home Page, and a "parent" to the Fee Info page.

Too Many Pages? Too Few?

Don't worry about having "too many" pages. In general, it's better to have more pages that are shorter in length, than a few pages which are longer, since this will minimize the amount of scrolling necessary to view the entire page. In fact, it's a good idea to keep in mind a rule of thumb of the newspaper industry, and design "above the fold", so to speak. Research has shown that anything a visitor can't see on a Web page without scrolling is less likely to be viewed at all.

Relax ...

Don't feel you have to have everything set in stone already ... just jot down a very basic outline of your site's structure. You can always move or add pages later on, but hammering out the underlying organization of your site up front will help avoid confusion and potential headaches down the road. It will also help you when first setting up your site in FrontPage.

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glossary of some helpful terms