Writing web pages

When you have a site map and sketches of your home page and sub-page designs you are ready to begin writing the pages (what is a web page?). You can do this either by writing pages directly in HTML code or by using web page editing software (such as Dreamweaver) to create the code for you.

If you choose to use Dreamweaver, you should find it helps with designing page layout because you can work in a "design view", as well as work directly with the HTML code in "code view". Dreamweaver also has tools to help you manage your whole web site.

Whichever method you choose, the end result (your web page) will be a text file that contains your content and the HTML code that the browser uses to display the page on screen. This means that you are not necessarily restricted to one method when you have started. It's possible to start writing pages in Dreamweaver's "design view", and then edit the HTML code by hand, or vice versa.

To publish your pages to the University's web server, you will need to have a username and password for the Unix service. Your IT Rep may be able to set this up for you, if not, the web team might be able to help. Your new web account will need preparing before you can publish your pages.

During the stages of building your site, you are recommended to run usability tests to find out where users are having problems so that you can make changes at an early stage.