Topic of project 1: WYSIWYG Tools "What You See Is What You Get"
Many website building tools are simple to use and require little or no knowledge of coding or complicated web design knowledge. Start exploring how to use Weebly's WYSIWYG tools.
First, you will build a temporary site that will familiarize you with the interface. We can get rid of these pages later, after the project has been graded, but this can be your first web site.
Decide on a topic for your site. Weebly is VERY user-friendly. You will learn the basics of the Weebly interface by experimentation, building a webpage that shares information about something you enjoy or are interested in -- a specific video game, your favorite sports team, a musical artist you like, a club you want people to join, an organization like Habitat for Humanity, etc.
Log in. Go to http://students.weebly.com and log in using the username I provide in class and the password you selected on the first day of school.
Name your new site. You will end up with http://_________________.weebly.com
For this activity, you can always change it later, BUT in the real world it's very important to pick a good name and not change your website once people start bookmarking it.
Start experimenting with tools. Your site needs to have:
• A selected theme/background (pick one of the defaults). This theme can be selected from Weebly's pre-built templates, but it should be appropriate to the topic you choose.
• A "front page", often called a landing page or home page, which gives visitors a basic explanation of the purpose of your site and what they'll find in the navigation tabs
• Three (or more!) pages in addition to your landing page/home page: a contact page (you don't have a "contact form" option, so make a button that will send an email you and create a text box that explains what site viewers should include in their email to you), a blog page, and a page with information about your chosen topic.
• Write at least 3 blog entries or articles. These can be short entries of 3 - 5 sentences, but each should be different. Feel free to make up fake "news" items, events, announcements, or topics.
• Add at least five images to your site that help make things interesting visually, and match the theme of your site.
* Please keep in mind that these sites are public. Just like on a public Facebook profile, anything you put on these sites can be viewed by the internet at large. Be safe, be smart -- don't post personally identifiable information or pictures!
The tentative deadline for your site is Friday, August 29. I think you can probably finish sooner than that, though, but this allows us time to troubleshoot problems that may come up. As we learn more about web design, we may revisit these pages and update them by tweaking Weebly's back-end code.
Many website building tools are simple to use and require little or no knowledge of coding or complicated web design knowledge. Start exploring how to use Weebly's WYSIWYG tools.
First, you will build a temporary site that will familiarize you with the interface. We can get rid of these pages later, after the project has been graded, but this can be your first web site.
Decide on a topic for your site. Weebly is VERY user-friendly. You will learn the basics of the Weebly interface by experimentation, building a webpage that shares information about something you enjoy or are interested in -- a specific video game, your favorite sports team, a musical artist you like, a club you want people to join, an organization like Habitat for Humanity, etc.
Log in. Go to http://students.weebly.com and log in using the username I provide in class and the password you selected on the first day of school.
Name your new site. You will end up with http://_________________.weebly.com
For this activity, you can always change it later, BUT in the real world it's very important to pick a good name and not change your website once people start bookmarking it.
Start experimenting with tools. Your site needs to have:
• A selected theme/background (pick one of the defaults). This theme can be selected from Weebly's pre-built templates, but it should be appropriate to the topic you choose.
• A "front page", often called a landing page or home page, which gives visitors a basic explanation of the purpose of your site and what they'll find in the navigation tabs
• Three (or more!) pages in addition to your landing page/home page: a contact page (you don't have a "contact form" option, so make a button that will send an email you and create a text box that explains what site viewers should include in their email to you), a blog page, and a page with information about your chosen topic.
• Write at least 3 blog entries or articles. These can be short entries of 3 - 5 sentences, but each should be different. Feel free to make up fake "news" items, events, announcements, or topics.
• Add at least five images to your site that help make things interesting visually, and match the theme of your site.
* Please keep in mind that these sites are public. Just like on a public Facebook profile, anything you put on these sites can be viewed by the internet at large. Be safe, be smart -- don't post personally identifiable information or pictures!
The tentative deadline for your site is Friday, August 29. I think you can probably finish sooner than that, though, but this allows us time to troubleshoot problems that may come up. As we learn more about web design, we may revisit these pages and update them by tweaking Weebly's back-end code.