In this project, you will choose a non-profit group such as a school, 4-H club, church, etc. You may also want to work with someone in your community such as a small business, community support organization or chamber of commerce.
You will work with the organization to plan, write, design, build, post and manage a Web page.
If you have not designed Web pages before, you might want to do the series of lessons in the "Cracking the Code" project. These will teach you the basics of HTML.
You should know, though, that planning a Web page involves much more than the technical coding. In fact, planning and organizing the Web page, including exactly what will be on it, is much more important than the actual computer stuff.
1. Meet with the non-profit groups several times before actually beginning.
Talk to them and try to find out specifically:
Remember to write everything down!
You want want to "surf the Web" and look at other similar pages to come up with some ideas.
2. Next, you should come up with a timetable.
3. Now, you should figure out "Who will do what"?
If you are working all by yourself, this is easy: YOU! But even if you are in charge of the project all by yourself, you may want to delegate people within the non-profit group to be in charge of rounding up material for you. You are creating a Web page for them; you don't want to be running around like crazy trying to get pieces of information you need.
If you are working with a group to create this Web page, divide the group by people who have access to computers and people who don't; by those people who know HTML and those who don't; and by people's personal interests.
For example, somebody without a computer might be in charge of rounding up information such as a calendar or list of members. Then, somebody with a computer could type in all the information.
Remember...doing fancy HTML coding is not as important as having up-to-date, important and well-organized information on your Web page. Plan it out as carefully as you would plan a demonstration, speech or school report.
If you do have several people working on the Web page, it might be good to assign someone as "captain," so at least one person knows which pieces everyone else is working on.
4. How will you post the pages?
After you have created the Web pages--or perhaps you could do this at the same time--you need to figure out how this page will be posted to the World Wide Web.
The non-profit group you are working for might already have e-mail, and some e-mail providers will also offer storage space for a home page on their main server. Check into this.
If the non-profit group does not have e-mail or any other Internet account, you will have to find them an ISP (Internet Service Provider). Look in the phone book, search on the Web, ask around and be sure to compare rates and services.
There are some companies on the Web that offer free homepages (use a search engine and look under the World Wide Web). The downside of this is that the URL (address) of the Web site may not be as specific as you would like.
For example, I would love my personal Web page to be titled: www.suzitaylor.com, but it often costs money to get that kind of name. If I had a free page through geocities, for example, my page might be something like www.geocities.com/people/personalpages/taylor. Get it? You just have to think about the specific needs of the group you are working with.
5. Who will update and change the pages?
This step is very important. Once the Web page is created and posted doesn't mean your job is done! One great thing about the Web is that you have the opportunity to change information every day. You can't do this with a newsletter or a brochure!
So, it is very important to change information frequently, or your page will get stale. This process often takes a lot of time (probably more than you think).
You might try making a schedule of responsibilities (one person does changes in June, another person in July, etc.) or try teaching people at the non-profit group to do their own updates.
6. How will you tell the world about your Web page?
Now... you have to let everybody know your group has a Web page! Read up on search engines and find out how to register your page. Print the URL on everything else: newsletters, business cards, brochures, posters, etc.
Think back to your first planning stage: who are you trying to reach? How would you get information into those people's hands?
7. Lastly, pat yourself on the back!
If you have completed this project successfully, you have learned a lot about marketing, teamwork, planning...not to mention the World Wide Web. You have also helped somebody step into cyberspace!!