>Resources for website design
>Resources for website registration and hosting
Resources for website design
Software
All of the communities that we are working with will receive a copy of, and be trained to maintain their websites using software called Mozilla. This software is free, high quality, and the Composer feature (for .html editing) is sophisticated and user-friendly enough to meet the needs of most people who are simply looking to maintain an existing website. The software can be downloaded on Mozilla's site at:
http://www.mozilla.org/products/mozilla1.x/
However, if you become more serious about developing websites, you will probably want to upgrade to more sophisticated software. You will need at a minimum:
- A graphic design program to work with pictures and other graphics on your website (we used Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator but many other programs will work)
- <>Webdesign software such as Macromedia Dreamweaver, MS PageMaker, Adobe GoLive, or CoffeeCup HTML Editor (click here for a comparison and review of these products)
- An FTP (or file transfer protocol) manager. Although you can send files to your server (publish) from Mozilla Composer and from most other webdesign software, an FTP program will allow you to move multiple files and to manipulate files on the server where your webpage is hosted. There are lots of other good FTP programs available at a variety of prices including free. Many are available for download at Tucows (a website with lots of software available for download http://www.tucows.com)
You will also probably eventually need a scanner (so that you can convert documents and pictures to a digital format) and a digital camera.
On-line Resources
There are countless sources of information on-line about how to develop and maintain a website. A little knowledge of HTML programming language goes a long way towards understanding how websites work. Ken Ward's on-line tutorial is a great resource for beginners. He also has a tutorial on Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and JavaScript.
Another good on-line reference web page is HTML Goodies. It covers HTML, JavaScript, Perl, and more.
http://www.htmlgoodies.com/
One weakness of Mozilla Composer is small color palatte that comes with the program. In order to have more colors it is necessary to know the Hexidecimal or RGB numbers for the specific colors that you want. This visibone site has color charts that provide the numbers for each of the 216 "web safe" colors and also will allow you to see swatches of colors put next to each other so that you can come up with a desireable colorscheme for your website.
http://www.visibone.com/colorlab/big.html
Netmechanic's free webmaster tips newsletter is a goldmine of information about improving the design of your website. These are the details that separate a great site from a good site.
http://www.netmechanic.com/news/
One criteria for a good community website is that it meets the principles of "universal design." This means that your site is accessible by everyone, including individuals with disabilities. Below are some links to help you learn about the principles of universal design in websites and how to ensure that your site can be read by the blind, the colorblind and others.
The University of Washington has a nice website about usability that outlines the main considerations that a webdesigner should consider in making his or her website accessible to persons with disabilities. Many of these principles also make a website more generally usable.
Resources for website registration and hosting
One of the challenges that small communities face in website development is going through all of the steps from web-design to domain-name registration, to choosing a web-hosting service. One site that we have found very useful is a site called Web hosting Ratings (www.webhostingratings.com). Not only do the provide consumer reviews and comparisons of different hosting services, but their Frequently Asked Questions and Links sections are extremely informative.
