NCYM(F)
Web Page Building Handbook
II. Things to consider if you decide to create & support a home page
If you feel led to introduce the idea of a home page to your Friends meeting, the very first step after you feel led to work with this project should be to bring it before monthly meeting for business. The meeting as a whole needs to be a part of this process and express its identity as a body. Working through the monthly meeting will also give more folks an opportunity to contribute and think of things which one person working alone might not consider. In addition, you may find others with gifts in desktop publishing who are willing to help share the workload.
Planning ahead when you first begin to build your web page is essential.
You will need to make some initial decisions about the purpose, scope, audience and maintenance for your home page (these are decisions best made in business meeting or by a designated committee and then brought to business meeting). Without these ideas in mind from the beginning, your page may be difficult to navigate, confusing, disjointed, or become rapidly out of date.
Consider the over-all look of your home page. Your "index" page is particularly important, since it is the first information and impression visitors get of you. It is kind of like the clothes you wear to meet someone for the first time - you want to make a good impression.
Making a home page on the web can be thought of like interior decorating in your real house - you want a nice neat and uncluttered entryway ("index" page) where folks will feel welcome when they first come in; you want it to easily lead into some other rooms of your house, but not all of them; you want to have a unified look to your house so you can tell you are in another room but in the same house; you want to have things flow easily from one room to another without a sofa in front of a doorway (making an exit hard to see) or all the furniture in one corner of the room (making it hard to get to what you want in the room); you want space between things and you want to minimize clutter; you want to make your house welcoming and add a few personal touches.
Determining Content:
The process of determining content and presentation on your web page is very similar to how you would make a flyer or brochure (except you can get much more extensive on the web).
One helpful thing to do when attempting to determine the information, format etc. for your page is to look at other people’s or organizations’ home pages and see what aspects of their design you would like to include or avoid.
Some content basics for index (intro) page:
Some Questions which may be helpful for determining content:
Continuity:
Appearance -
As mentioned above, it is helpful to have a consistent format for the related pages of your home page.
Updates -
As with any publication, you want there to be some aspects of your home page which don’t change month to month or page to page. One aspect of this is to keep things under the same heading or connected to the same link when you update. Another aspect is background color, font or layout consistency. This consistency will help folks feel more comfortable using your page and going back regularly.
Support:
Keep in mind that anything you put up on the web page which will not be accurate 3 months, 6 months or a year down the line, will have to be updated accordingly.
If you decide to post your weekly bulletin or monthly newsletter, that means that each week or each month someone will have to take a few minutes to update that part of your page.
Folks who visit your site regularly will get used to and rely on that information. If a site seems to be poorly maintained and contains much outdated information, folks may wonder about the overall quality or stop visiting.
Back to Web Page Building Guide
This material is from the handbook used at the Web Page Building Workshop held
May 15, 1999 and sponsored by the NCYM(F) Young Adult Committee.
This guide was created by Lindley Osborne, Michael Shepherd and Sara Van Degrift.