CS1033 - Multimedia and Communications

Assignment #3 (15%)
Designing a Website Using Dreamweaver
 

PROJECT:

You have been approached by Micro Building Design to create a website for their shed and concrete business.  Your job is to come up with a brand new website that will promote their sheds and increase their sales. As of now, Micro Building Designs does not have a website and as such, they are open to almost any type of design/colour scheme as long as it promotes their products and services in a professional way. We are providing you with the content for creating each of the six required web pages.

CRITERIA:

Build a website to include ALL OF THE FOLLOWING things:

  1. A banner for your website made with Photoshop
  2. Content for the web pages: (read carefully)
  3. Number of Web pages: You need to create 6 webpages in total. Thus, you need to create a menu structure at the top of each webpage containing 6 links (buttons or text links) to each webpage. The text for the 6 webpages is contained in the content document
    Listed below are guidelines for each of the 6 webpages
    1. Home --> Text for this web page is included in the content document.
      • Have the words "Cabanons Fontaine, the builder of Perfect Sheds" (4th item in the list of reasons to purchase from Micro Building Designs) link to this website: http://www.cabanons.com/index.php/en/
      • Have the words "Gravel Base" (8th item in the list of reasons to purchase from Micro Building Designs) link to the words "Example of shed with a gravel base" on the "Our Sheds" page
      • Put the customer testimonials (i.e. their quotes) in italics.
      • Make sure you have a neat, well organized design for the home page.
         
    2. Our Sheds-->Text for this web page is included in the content document. 
    3. Concrete Work -->Text for this web page is included in the content document .
    4. Our Team--> Text for this web page is included in the content document . Set this page up in a nice, well organized manner.  Include a picture for each person. You can find fictitious pictures on the internet to represent each person but remember to reference the URLs for the pictures in your references page.
       
    5. Contact Us -->  Text for this web page is included in the content document .
       
    6. References: --> This webpage must contain the URLs for each image you obtained from the internet and used within your website.  Make sure this page is neatly laid out. You no longer have to place your image references in the Assignment Text box in Owl since they are now listed on this webpage HOWEVER you still must include a link to your website in the OWL assignment box, so the T.A. can find your website. NOTE: you do not need to put references for any images we supplied you with, just images that you use that were NOT supplied by us, images you search for on the internet and added to your site.
       
  4. A Table structure (NOT cascading style sheets): Fixed 900 pixels wide to control your overall website layout. You can use as many rows as you need to set up your layout, and as many tables, nested tables required to achieve the look.
     
  5. A Navigational structure: Create your menu links as button images, or as text. NOTE: If you decide to create button images, you MUST use Photoshop to create your buttons, you may not use button generating software. Navigational buttons/links that are very professional looking will get more marks than plain text links.
     
  6. Appropriate Images: Appropriate images MUST be embedded in each of your web pages to make the pages interesting. You can use the images from here or here or any images you find on the internet. All images used must be cited in your "References" web page. You can also use images from online stock photo companies such as http://www.bigstockphoto.com/, http://www.istockphoto.com/ but you will still have to cite these images as well.
     
  7. Color creativity: We will be looking to see whether colors co-ordinate and flow nicely with the overall look
     
  8. Clean Neat Layout: We are looking for a nicely laid out page as opposed to a cluttered, crowded page.
     
  9. Links We will be looking for several different types of links. You need an instance of each of the following link type in your website:
  10. Structured List (ordered OR unordered): You must have some sort of bulleted list or numbered list in one of your pages using Dreamweaver (there should be no hyphens used as bullets for lists).
     
  11. An image map with hotspots: It is up to you to think of a way of using an image map in this website. Marks will be given for how the image and it's hotspots related to the content it links up to. Go back to your notes if you don't remember what this is.
     
  12. Well balanced text formatting. We will be looking for:
  13. A well organized File/Folder structure to hold all your html files and images. Marks will be given based on how well you follow the instructions given in lectures and lab, how/where you stored your webpages in your folder and how/where you stored your images in your website folder/directory.
     
  14. An uppermost folder called assign3. You must keep your index.html home page in the upper most folder (the upper most folder must be called assign3). The sub-folders inside assign3 can be called whatever you wish. Note though, you will be given marks for appropriate file names and folder names. Also note: the home page called index.html MUST be located in the assign3 folder and NOT in a sub-folder of assign3. Thus, this is correct: assign3/index.html and this is incorrect: assign3/pages/index.html. The incorrect way will NOT display your home page initially so make sure you put index.html inside folder assign3 NOT in a sub-folder of assign3.

 

HANDING IN ASSIGNMENT 3: 

STEP 1: SFTPing YOUR WEBSITE TO THE INTERNET

As long as you have your website sitting in a folder called assign3 on the GAUL server, then anyone will be able to see your assignment simply by using the URL address: http://publish.gaul.csd.uwo.ca/yourwesternuserid/assign3/

You will still be using Winscp or Filezilla to upload your files but a few things will be different:

  1. When you run Winscp or Filezilla use the following information:
    1. Host Name: publish.gaul.csd.uwo.ca
      1. NOTE: on Filezilla, if you are OFF Campus, you need to put sftp://publish.gaul.csd.uwo.ca
    2. Username: Your Western username, for example jsmit27
    3. Password: The GAUL password you were sent by the computer science department at the beginning of term
    4. Port: 
      22 (only if you are on campus or in residence),
      27 (if you are using WINScp/Filezilla from off campus)
    5. File Protocol: This SHOULD by default be SFTP, but if it is FTP, change it to SFTP
       
  2. You will be put right in the directory where you will upload your assign3 folder.
  3. Drag your assign3 folder from your machine (on the left) up to publish.gaul.csd.uwo.ca (on the right)
  4. You no longer need to set permissions, they should be set automatically but you should still double check this by going to your website and checking that your links work.
  5. YOU MUST CHECK THAT YOUR WEBSITE WORKS, please follow these instructions to make sure this step worked.  If your password is not working when you attempt to use WinSCP (or Filezilla), go to here: http://www.csd.uwo.ca/staff/bruce/mail_pwd.html to have your current GAUL password emailed to your Western email account.

 

STEP 2: TESTING TO SEE IF YOUR WEBSITE IS VIEWABLE FROM THE INTERNET

WARNING: If you want to check if your website is working (all the links are correct and none of the images are broken), you MUST check it from an account/machine that was NOT used to make assignment. Thus, if you made your assignment on a home machine/laptop machine, then find another machine on campus to test the ALL the links OR have a friend test the links for you on their machine. If you created your website on the machines in the lab rooms (MC230 and MC235), then you should test your links from a home machine, or you can even test it from a machine in MC230/235 AS LONG AS YOU ARE TESTING IT ON A MACHINE THAT IS NOT LOGGED ON WITH YOUR USERID. Thus, in the labs, you could ask the person sitting next to you to check if the links work BUT NEVER TEST IT ON THE MACHINE YOU BUILT IT ON, it may appear that everything is correct but when the t.a.s go to look at your website, the links may be broken or the images may not appear!

To double check, open a browser such as Internet Explorer or Firefox and type the following web address: http://publish.gaul.csd.uwo.ca/youruserid/assign3. For example: if your username is lreid, you would type: http://publish.gaul.csd.uwo.ca/lreid/assign3/ This should bring up your home page called index.html. If it doesn't, you have done something wrong, try again or visit a TA during the posted consulting times. If your links or images are not working, this means you are not referencing them correctly in your web page and should check the following troubleshooting tips:

  1. You should look at where you stored the page/image and how you linked it to figure out what went wrong.
  2. Sometimes deleting it and reinserting it will fix it.
  3. Make sure that all your images and web pages are within the website, i.e. within the folder assign3. If you have to move files around or rename them, do it from the Dreamweaver File panel because only this way will Dreamweaver adjust its pointers on links etc.
  4. Make sure that your images are named the exactly the same in your file directory pane as the link in your .html file. For example: Cat.jpg is not the same as cat.jpg thus the case is very important in a filename. If you need to rename your image/filesname, then do it from inside the File Pane in Dreamweaver, Dreamweaver will try to fix the links for you.


STEP 3: SUBMITTING YOUR ASSIGNMENT ON OWL:

  1. You ALSO MUST submit a link to your website via http://owl.uwo.ca/. See below for the details of how to do this.

    owl submission
    .

The labs will be VERY busy with students trying to build their assignment. NO extensions will be given because someone could not find a free machine in MC230 or MC235 to use Dreamweaver to build his/her website. Try to hand the assignment in the day before it is due, do NOT leave it till the final day.

Late Policy

 

FINAL DREAMWEAVER TIPS:

A lot of the following concepts have been presented during the lectures and used in your lab tutorials, remember to think about them when designing your website.

TECHNICAL

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CREATIVE

Homepage
  • Represented as "index.html"

Color
  • Color balance (important)
  • Pleasing colors to match company profile
  • Pick an appropriate page background color

Banner (top)
  • Approximate size 150 x 900
  • Can be taller as long as all your side links or top links fit within the window (no scrolling)

Web page Balance
  • Web page boundaries
  • Sections: easily identified, easy to read
  • Effective use of padding in cells

Images
  • Clear, no noise
  • Must have alt tag and title tag for listed above

Image Links
  • Balance: size
  • Buttons: suitable size
  • Color: what color are links

Text Color
Text Size
  • Easy to read
  • Appropriate size, font type relative to overall web page

Navigation
  • Easy to navigate through your website and placement
Navigational Links
  • Easy to read
  • Size appropriate with rest of web page
  • Should not have to horizonally scroll to read link
  • Target field:  new window or not?

Images
  • Fits with rest of color scheme
  • Fits with the content

Property Titles
  • Set a property title for each webpage in your website. Follow instructions given out in lecture.

WEBSITE FILE ORGANIZATION

Bottom of web page
  • Sometimes, many websites place the contact information at the very end of each webpage.

Files
  • images folder
  • Use folders to further organize your web pages

Spelling/Grammar
  • use Spell Checker

Upload
  • Server needs: file names and case sensitivity
  • Always use lower case

Paragraphs
  • Most of the times use left alignment for paragraphs. Reserve centering for small things you want to emphasize

 

 

Crowdiness
  • Avoid putting text in web pages that runs into table grid lines or image edges. You can add padding to the cell or to the image to spread the text away from the table cell or image edges.