Creating a Web Presence

Creating a Web Presence

A Web presence may be as simple as a family "home page" that lists a family's favorite sites and links around the world. It may be as complex as a large newspaper, containing audio and video files and involving sophisticated search tools. Both projects vary in scale, but include the same basic development considerations. Your decisions on how to proceed will be integrally tied to your goals and resources especially your financial, time, technical and creative resources.

As a Web content provider, you need:

A method for designing and developing the "pages" which make up your Web site. Although the medium and process are different, this is akin to the way you design and write a brochure. The pages may contain text, graphics, audio, video or other files. They may also contain hypertext links to other resources on the Internet.
A place to store the files for your site, on a computer called the Web server. This computer runs Web server software which can communicate with the browsers people use to access your site. A Web server can be as simple as a Macintosh in a k-12 classroom, or as complex as a UNIX system at a university workstation. Server software exists for many computer platforms.
The Web server must have a dedicated connection to the Internet through an Internet Access Provider. If you want your Web pages to be accessible all the time, the Web server must have a direct Internet connection.

Getting your site up and running, not to mention updating and maintaining it, can involve quite a number of tasks.

Before you design your Web pages:

Frame your goals and purposes.
Develop content. What information will you present, and how?
Think interactive. What information do you want back from the users?
- Demographics?
- Suggestions?
- Electronic mail?

Now you have your design considerations and you're ready to create your pages:

Define, layout, tag, and test pages using HTML (hypertext Markup Language), a simple, page description language.

Load files onto the server and prepare them for access.

Validate the HTML tagging, verify links, and test for usability.

Master the file formats for your various content: In addition to text, you may have picture files, audio files, etc..

Now that your server is ready:

Secure a direct connection to the Internet.
Schedule acquisition of new content. Nothing is worse than stale information.
Schedule hardware and software maintenance, upgrades, and backups. What will happen if your server hardware fails, and you're out of town?
Enable optional services such as firewall security, user registration, user authentication, or use statistics. Provide hooks to external databases for facilities of electronic funds transfer.
Register and promote your site so others can find it.

And this task list is by no means exhaustive, but don't let it frighten you. If you are interested in mastering the necessary technical skills and welcome a challenge, you can do all of the above on your own. Many individuals create and operate their own sites, and organizations often divide the work among teams.

Most new content providers, however, outsource some or all of these tasks to others. If you don't care to design an original page, you can use existing, often free, templates. If you don't have the computing power or fast Internet connection at your facility, you can rent Web space on someone else's computer (a commercial online service provider, for example).

Even if you intend to outsource all or most of the work, you or someone on your staff should be familiar with the basic concepts in order to make informed and effective decisions.