Organizing files in a methodical manner is even more important when it comes to the files that make up a Web site. On the Web server this structure must make sense not only to me, but also to end users and anyone who contributes content to the site. Below I'll walk you through the concepts I use to organize my files. You may find that another system works better for you and the needs of your site, but if you consider the following issues it may help you enhance your system as well.

Create a directory somewhere on your computer or network that will be the master directory for your site.

Try to keep all files related to the site in this directory. While Dreamweaver and other programs will let you create links to files almost anywhere on your computer or network, these stray files can cause problems when the time comes to upload the site to the Web server. I find it is also helpful to include working files such as Word and Photoshop documents here, so that I can refer back to them as necessary.

Match your file structure to your site map.

In my earlier entry, Organizing, acquiring, and creating content for your website, I wrote about creating a site map that would organize your content and navigational structure. The fictional Department of Cartooning's map showed us 6 main content areas that would be reflected in our menus. Thus when I began building this site, I started by creating folders for each of these content areas. I also created three additional folders; css, images and ssi, in which I store my cascading style sheets, photographs, and server-side includes files. Categories such as Academics and Resources that have multiple subcategories will similarly have multiple subfolders within. As I build my site I'll store my files in the appropriate folders—rather than loose in one main folder—for the following reasons.

• In the future it will be easier to find the page I must edit if I am looking in a folder containing only 10 files, than it will be if I have to sort through all 50, 100 or possibly even more files.
• I can use shorter url's that include only the filename for links between pages in the same directory.
• Filenames such as index.html can be re-used in different folders
• When editing an element common to all pages within a given category I can use Dreamweaver's find and replace tool to replace all instances of the change within the folder at once.
• The address of the page when posted to the server will reflect this structure thus offering a locational cue to users of the page.
• Directories and subdirectories allow me to use shorter filenames because some of the description is implied in the directory name.

File naming conventions: simpler is better

Descriptive filenames help you recognize what content the file contains and offer clues to users who stumble upon a page via a search. However, overly descriptive filenames create very long url's. To reduce url size without losing meaning I recommend:

• Name the main page, in any given directory, index.html. This file name is the default on most Web servers including Case's main server. Some servers use default.html; when in doubt ask your server administrator. When you use index.html as your default page, the server recognizes this to be the main page of the directory and thus does not require you to type the file name at the end of the address. Instead of linking to a page called http://www.case.edu/events/ford/lecturehome.html, I could therefore link to the shorter http://www.case.edu/events/ford/.
• Abbreviate file and directory names. This can be done without losing meaning. Instead of naming a subdirectory tools_of_the_trade just call it tools. Similarly http://www.case.edu/webdev/hactest/cartoon/resources/tools/print.html is long, yet far more manageable than http://www.case.edu/webdev/hactest/cartoon/resources/
  tools_of_the_trade/techniquesofprinting.html.
• Don't use blank spaces in your file names. While most browsers will substitute %20 for the space, some browsers may not recognize these. Blank spaces can also cause links sent in e-mail programs to break, thus confusing the recipient.
• Most Web servers are case sensitive, so it helps to be consistent in your usage. I tend to use all lowercase names, however it is acceptable to use uppercase when referring to an acronym such as http://www.case.edu/provost/UCITE/.

Your local directory structure should mirror the directory structure on the Web server—but not completely

When you create links between the pages on your site, the path to the links is predicated on the organization of your files and your directories. If you link to pages outside of your main directory, then these links won't work when you upload your site to the server. If you keep all of the files and directories for your site in one parent directory, you won't have this problem.

Although most of your directories and files will be the same on your local directory as they are on the server, there are some exceptions.

• The Web server has no use for that rough draft of text you stored in a word file or the .psd (Photoshop) file of your masthead image. Upload the .html pages you built, images such as .gif's or .jpg's and other files required by your pages, but leave the extra files behind. You can save space on the server by not uploading any unnecessary files.
• The Web server also relies on a few files or directories that you didn't create. Such directories may include bin, etc and usr. Leave these as they are on the server.

As you've now realized, all of these suggestions are fairly simple and easy to implement. But as your site grows from 4 to 40 or perhaps even 400 pages, you'll find that a little bit of planning in the beginning will make the site easier to use and maintain over time. If you have additional tips and suggestions regarding ways to organize files, please share them below.

In the Planning your Web site articles I wrote on first and secondary pages, I recommended not overwhelming the user with too many choices or too much information. That less is more approach works very well to ensure that critical information is not lost in a crowd of words, and helps us set up an easy to maneuver navigational system. But as we get deeper into specific areas of the site, our goals and strategies change.

Once we have carefully guided our visitors to our third, fourth and deeper level pages, it is time to reward them with in-depth content that

• answers their questions
• helps them make decisions
• shares your knowledge and expertise
• or otherwise helps them achieve the goals they had in visiting the site.

At this point we don't need to worry about short-attention spans anymore than would a novelist. Our visitors have come this far to find out X, and we should supply them with the necessary information to understand X, whether that can be done in 2 paragraphs or 20 pages. A user with a goal will read through 20 pages if that is what it takes to achieve the goal.

For example, let us return to the fictional Department of Cartooning site. On this site I've created a tertiary page on mechanical pencils. It includes a few paragraphs about pencils, a photo and a list of additional resources. When planning this site I had decided to include an area of resources that would include information on tools of the trade as well as other references. One such tool is the pencil. It was my thought that visitors to the cartooning site might include

• Potential students wanting to learn and practice with the tools before beginning their coursework
• Professional cartoonists wanting to learn more about the tools and history of the craft
• Skeptical users of wooden pencils
• Drawing teachers
• Art supply salesman, etc.

With that in mind, I must now ask myself if my site provided sufficient information to help these visitors achieve their goals. In this case, I do not think that it has. While I've been fond of mechanical pencils ever since I was a toddler dissecting the ones I found on my father's desk—much to his dismay—I don't actually know that much about them. I also have no idea whether cartoonists prefer them or not. I do know a bit about line art and printing, but I could have elaborated more. Additionally I could have shared some history, and given users tips on matching the right pencil and lead to their projects. I did include links to additional resources, but I would have a better chance at satisfying my visitors if I took the time to do additional pencil research.

I use this example because I think an imperfect page helps to illustrate that feeling that users get when there goal hasn't been met. After navigating through the site, and finding the right page, they then discover that it doesn't fill all of their needs and they have to continue their quest somewhere else.

This happens to me quite often. Whether I'm searching for autoparts or the best apple kuchen recipe, I will get frustrated if I jump through all the hoops only to discover that something is missing—the recipe lists all of the ingredients, but doesn't tell me what size pan to use or how long to cook the kuchen.

Yet when the reverse is true, I am quite pleased. Two years ago my dryer stopped working. I determined that the problem was in the on switch because it wasn't clicking into position properly. I took off the cover so I could look at the part, compared that button to the others, wrote down the part number, then hopped online to visit the GE website. Given that product code numbers had changed since I'd first bought the dryer, it took some hunting, but over time I was able to narrow down my search and track down the part I needed. I was also able to confirm that it was the correct part because they included an illustration and a list of models that used this part. With credit card in hand, I ordered my part and it arrived in just a few days. It took me less than five minutes to install and I was able to dry my clothes without the expense of either a repairman or a new dryer.

Although it took me more time to find the part on their website, than it did to install it, I was happy to have gone through the process, because when I did find the part, it was what I needed and it saved me both time and money. I was happy, G.E. was happy for the sale, and perhaps they are happy now that I am recounting how happy I was to find my part on their Web site. When considering future appliance purchases I will probably consider G.E. again, because I know I can count on them in regard to their parts and equipment. In other words everybody won.

As was the case with me and G.E., when we help our visitors to achieve their goals, we help them to achieve our own goals as well. If you keep this in mind when creating your pages, I expect you will have similar success.

p.s. Whether writing for the Web or for something else you may be interested in reading Mano Singham's latest blog entry. He offers some great insight into the process of writing. ]]> http://www.heidicool.com/blog/2006/04/17/content/feed/ 0 http://www.heidicool.com/blog/2006/02/08/secondarypages/ http://www.heidicool.com/blog/2006/02/08/secondarypages/#comments Thu, 09 Feb 2006 01:57:17 +0000 Heidi Cool http://www.heidicool.com/blog/?p=30

Now that you've created a welcoming front door, it's time to create your secondary pages. These pages can fall into two categories. On a small site made up of just a few pages, your secondary pages will hold your primary content. On a larger site, such as our Department of Cartooning site, the secondary page must both include useful content and serve as a gateway to the other pages in that section of the site.

Gateway to enlightenment

When I describe a page as a gateway, I mean it to be a page through which a user can find all other pages in this sectional area. On this page you will see a menu on the left that clearly illustrates what information is available. You will also find content on this page that is descriptive of the topic at hand. As is true of the main page, this content tells users they've arrived in the right place and gives them additional information.

As an example, let's consider the "About Us" page on the cartooning site. "About Us" is often considered a catch-all sort of phrase, but it's a section that belongs on most web sites. It contains the most basic information that may be of interest to users, it explains your mission, and offers information on how to contact you to learn more. With that in mind, I wrote a few paragraphs for this page that I felt best described the department and it's mission.

Given that this department doesn't exist, I based this on what I imagined such a department would be at a university like Case. It wouldn't offer mere vocational training for aspiring cartoonists, but would draw on the scholarship of many departments to create a program that would give students a broad-based liberal learning experience. To give an overview of this I included the following types of information:

• Who might be interested in this department?
• Which fields of study are included in the program?
• What are some unique aspects of cartooning?
• How do we address the challenges posed by this field?
• What do our students do after graduation

If you read the page, you'll notice that I didn't need to go into a lot of detail to address these questions. I just wanted to include enough information to serve my potential audience so they could understand what we do and why. As we've discussed before, this audience could include potential students, parents, professors, researchers, media, etc.

When deciding what to include I tried to imagine who would go to this page and what they would expect and need to find. In the real world, we would also rely on marketing research. I find it can also be helpful to test my content with a few "what if" scenarios.

• If I were a student trying to choose a major would this information entice me? Would I want to learn more? Would I consider majoring in cartooning?
• If I were a student who's father had just screamed, "What sort of major is cartooning? How are you going to pay rent when you graduate?" would I be able to send him to this page? Would it sooth his mind and inspire him to learn more?
• If I were a newspaper editor looking to hire a new editorial cartoonist, would this let me know that my applicant received the right training?
• If I were a professor from another university looking for partners for a research study, would this page inspire confidence?

I'm sure you can come up with numerous such examples for your own sites.

Design Elements

Secondary pages using the Case templates use the same banner and footer as the main page, a left hand sectional menu, and an open area for your main content. You have enormous flexibility in this area so long as you don't change the fonts and colors or include sloppy looking graphics.

For this page I chose a simple layout with a small photo floating to the right. I used an illustration of the design studio with some locational information as it seemed fitting for the page, but I could also have considered photos of students or faculty, images of people drawing, etc. If this were a real page, I might have had a student or faculty member create a series of one square cartoons about the department that I could scatter throughout the site. These would both offer some visual interest and create a unifying theme.

For your own pages you could consider using a right-hand side bar such as the Annual Fund page, paragraphs with thumbnail photos such as the Campus Tours page, a combination of photos, text and tables as found on our weather page, or any number of other layout options.

However you choose to arrange your content on the page, just keep in mind that the content is appropriate to the page and that the page is easy-to-read and uncluttered. If do that you'll be well on your way.

Next time: Digging deeper into the site with tertiary pages

Next >>

In the last chapter of the tutorial we discussed content acquisition. Now that some time has passed, and we've gathered our content it is time to start building the page. For the purposes of this entry my focus will be to explain what content goes where. This will not be a detailed explanation of HTML and CSS.

The image on the right is a screen capture of the first page of our fictional Department of Cartooning website. As was decided when building the site map, I'm using an "Advanced Template" with a horizontal menu for this site. (Template files are available in the Web Toolkit.) I've assigned a number to each section of the site, and will now use that to explain the various elements of the page.

1: Top Navigation

This section is meant to offer consistent navigation from every website at Case. It should not be edited.

2: Masthead/Banner

This area contains 3 primary elements, the logo, a background image, and the name of your site. In an Advanced Template this area is usually gray. In this case I used Turquoise as I felt cartooning would benefit from something more whimsical.

Each template comes with a background image, but if you have an image in mind that more aptly fits your site, then we can change that. 99% of the time this image should be a photograph, but for the department of cartooning I felt an illustration would be better. I used a drawing of bears I'd made for an earlier project. If this were a real site I would have used something from the department.

The image used in this area is 422 x 108 pixels wide. It is created from a Photoshop file that incorporates a particular mask that both fades out the left side and applies uniform color to the image. If you would like a diffent image, you can create one by following the customize your masthead image instructions.

The third element in this area is the site name. This need not be the name of your department. Here I've used "Department of Cartooning", but I could just has easily have chosen "Cartooning at Case." Simply pick a name that reflects your content. The name should appear in UPPERCASE letters and should remain constant for every page on your site.

3: Primary Navigation Menu

This menu will appear on every page in your site. It will allow users to easily switch between sectional areas no matter what page they are viewing at a given moment. The links used in this menu are simply the section names you came up with when building your site map. Additionally this menu includes a link to your home page.

4: Headline & Image

This area is meant to announce "who you are" and "what your mission is" to your audience. You could choose something as simple as "Welcome to Department X" or something more descriptive. This space should tell your audience that they've landed at the right place, the information you provide is just what they are seeking, and that your site is worth exploring. The photo on the right should reinforce this message or reflect the nature of your site.

The templates were built with certain sized images in mind, and you should size your photo to match. Then choose your text to fit the space. While this may seem backwards, it helps to ensure that you don't overload this area with too many words. If you really need to change the size of the photo to reflect different dimensions, then you may need to adjust your stylesheets as well. You should also view the page in multiple browsers. A photo that looks fine in Internet Explorer may move things around in Firefox or Mozilla. If you need assistance with this feel free to contact me or Kevin.

5: The Search Box

This box allows users to search your site via Google. You will need to edit the code to match the address of your site. Maintainers of older sites will also need to ensure that they use the current Case convention rather than the former CWRU convention. Learn more.

6:Related Sites

Just as it sounds, this box gives you a place to link to related sites. These may be other Case sites, or external sites. Try to pick the places that would give people additional information that supports the content on your site. If you have 50 related sites you should just pick the top few and create a links page for the rest. The use of double angle brackets to indicate a site external to your own is optional.

In some cases you may find that you need an additional box. Perhaps you have multiple types of related sites. Or you have special content that you wish to feature more prominently. Feel free to do this so long as you maintain the same look and feel. Pharmacology did this both by including an extra gray box for "Our People" and a navy box for "Apply Here." You'll note that aside from the color change the navy box otherwise maintains the same look and feel of the gray boxes. Another example can be found at ITS.

7, 8, 9: Primary Content, New, Events, Announcements, etc.

These elements make up your main content area, but this is also the area where you have the most flexibility. You may wish to use multiple announcement boxes, bring in a feed of headlines from your blog, describe your department, etc. American Music Masters, Marketing & Communications, and Varsity Athletics all provide examples of this.

Choose your content carefully. People often try to throw everything "important" on the main page, but if include too much you will find that your "important" items become lost in the crowd, competing with one another for attention. If you have a great event coming up, give them a brief headline with a link to more info. You can do the same with news and other announcements. Give them just enough of a taste to whet their appetite to learn more.

While the main page should be inviting and informative, keep in mind that it is just the front door. What you put on this page is the sign that invites users to open that door and come inside. Your job, is to select content that makes them open that door.

Next chapter: Interior pages

Next >>

Now that we've reviewed and finalized our site map, it is time to start collecting and writing the content we need to build the site.

Acquiring existing written content

Some of the content you need probably exists already. For example we've decided to include course descriptions on our fictional cartooning site. These probably already exist in the General Bulletin, so you could just go there and copy and paste from that document. On the other hand you may find that you want to include more details than are available in the bulletin. In this case I would send the blurbs from the bulletin to the professors teaching the classes and ask them to write a more detailed description for the site. Some may also want to include a syllabus, a link to their class blog, or a link to Blackboard.

Your faculty can also provide you with articles that they've published or other information on their research. Perhaps Professor Brown has written the definitive book on Superman. He may have existing content that you can incorporate into the Superman section. He and the other members of the faculty may also have existing webpages that you can link to rather than create from scratch.

Writing new content

Some of the content you've chosen may exist clearly in the heads of your faculty, staff or students but doesn't really exist anywhere else. Professor Van Pelt may give a lecture on pens in her beginning illustration class but all that exists on paper is an outline. You could have her write a page about this topic (if she has time available) or you could request writing assistance from Marketing and Communications.

Your department members will be a great resource, but many will have time limitations. If they don't have time to write what you need they may be willing to spend an hour with a writer who can interview them about their expertise and then write what you need for the topic.

Even if you find that everyone is able to contribute to the project, you will find that they have very different writing styles. In this case it would also be helpful to have a marketing writer review your content and edit it for consistency in style, flair and punctuation.

A writer can also help translate pages covering very technical topics into language that can be more easily understood by a lay person. This is important because not every visitor to your site will share the same level of expertise. While a colleague in Berlin may very well want to know every technical detail of your fuel cell research, a twelve-year-old girl in Waterville, Maine just wants to know more generally what they do and how they work because she is thinking of studying to become an engineer someday (perhaps here at Case).

If you think you need assistance with this part of the process, please feel free to request a writer from our department.

Photographs and Illustrations

Photographs and illustrations add color and diversion to your site to help break up long chunks of copy. More imporantly they can serve to illustrate the point you are trying to make. As with written content, some photographs, such as the photo of Clark Hall, may already be available. I have thousands of images you may pilfer (for use on Case sites) both online and sitting on my Mac (because I've not had time to post them all). Case's creative team also has a large collection of images on CD in Bellflower Hall. Your department probably has a number of its own images available, and in the Case of the Cartooning site your faculty should be able to share their own cartoons. University Archives is also a great resource for photos as well as historical information about the university.

You will also probably discover that there are images you need that do not exist. If you have a good eye you may be able to shoot your own pictures. Or you can request shots to be taken by our campus photographer. If you are looking for an existing image or the services of our photographer, you may request those online as well.

Next time: Building the site

Postscript

When using existing content please make sure you have the proper permission from the holder of the copyright.

Next >>

Having reviewed our goals and those of our audience, we should now be at the stage where we have a list of content ideas. Some of these we've come up with on our own and some have been suggested by our prospective site visitors.

If you are like me you may have these items scrawled out in no particular order on a legal pad, note cards, or the back of an unused airsickness bag. Now is the time to make sense of them.

Organizing your content

The first thing I try to do is arrange my items into logical clusters, then give names to the clusters. These names will become the items in the menu on our site.

One way to do this would be to write each topic on a post-it note and put it on the wall. This way you can move things around as you see natural clusters forming. You could also do this with notecards on a bulletin board, or you could move them around in the computer program of your choice. Any technique will do so long as it makes sense to you.

Our objective in clumping these topics together is to build a map of our website. This can be illustrated as a flowchart as shown above, or done in a simple outline.

Here on the Department of Cartooning Sitemap you will see one possible way to arrange the content. Some categories have only a few items while others have so many that they can be broken up into sub categories. I've arranged them so the category names are both descriptive and fairly general. I want terms that will be understandable to a wide audience so that users won't have to stumble blindly through the site in the hopes of finding something specific such as the page on pens and pencils. I'm hoping that resources will appear to be an obvious category for this topic and that they won't look first in About Us or Academics. Given that people process information differently there is no guarantee that this will make sense to each and every user, but my hope is that by using broad categories I can funnel the users through the broad terms on down to more specific items.

Reviewing the sitemap

Now that I've built my sitemap I have a clear picture in my head of where everything will go and what pages I will need to create. I can see by the structure of my site that Case's advanced template will work well for the site because it allows for a primary horizontal menu as well as vertical submenus that can be used within each section.

My sitemap may also indicate changes that should be made. While looking at this map I've realized that I've not created a portfolio category to showcase the work of our students. I may be missing other things as well so at this point it is probably a good idea to share the map with others in your department who can help you finalize the map.

Once you and your team have agreed on the site map you can start acquiring your content. We'll discuss that in detail in Part Two.

Last week the subject of our target audiences received short shrift as I waxed forth on the subject of goals. In revisiting this subject I want to emphasize just how critical it is to find the balance between our own goals and those of the people we wish to visit the site.

Sticking with the cartoon theme I've used the example of Dr. Doolittle's "Pushme-Pullyou." One head represents the person producing the web content while the other represents the site visitor. In the movie this creature provided a navigational advantage when they were on board ship as it could see both in front and behind. It had a clear vision.

Yet if these heads did not work together, if one wanted to wander south to drink water, while the other wanted to go north to eat plantains, then they would simply trip over their own feet and not accomplish either goal.

As web producers, how can we best mesh these goals? First we must understand them. As we've already analyzed our own, let's think about those of our audience.

Who is your audience?

Keeping in mind the goals we determined last week, the audience for our Department of Cartooning could potentially include:

• Current Students, Staff & Faculty
• Prospective Students, Staff & Faculty
• Alumni
• Corporations, Foundations, Government Agencies and other potential donors
• Working cartoonists
• Newspaper syndicates and other media outlets
• Cartooning researchers and scholars
• Art directors from publishing houses and advertising agencies
• School children and their teachers
• Writers and other visual artists
• etc.

What content do they expect or hope to find on your site?

In some cases this may be obvious. Current students probably want a list of professors and course descriptions. Alumni may want networking resources. For each audience you can probably come up with a list of resources they might desire. But to really understand what they want, the most direct approach is to ask them.

If you were the Behemoth Corporation you might do this by having your market research department conduct surveys and focus groups. If you work on campus you might contact our marketing department to see if they have any pertinent data available. Perhaps you could contact a professor at Weatherhead to see if you could get some students to help do your research as a class project.

However, if you don't need something this elaborate, you can also take the simple route. Just ask the people you know who fall into these categories. While you may not be collecting data from a statistically significant sampling, you will probably get some great new ideas coupled with an understanding of why some things are more important to them than others.

I'm working with a department now that has included two students on the web project team. Thus far we've benefited not only from their own ideas, but also by their connection to the rest of the community. Within the past few weeks they've been able to gather information from 50% of the students in their program. As you can imagine this has been invaluably helpful. I'm sure you will find it so as well.

Please tune in again next week as we discuss how to create the content that will serve our goals.

At this point you should have a fairly clear idea of the goals for your site. But have you considered this: are your goals related to the goals of your intended audience? To examine this issue let's pretend we are building a new website for the fictitious Department of Cartooning.

As we see in my own feeble attempt at cartooning, our webmaster is pondering his goals. The first one, to recruit faculty and students is a goal common to academic departments. (How we create content to support such goals will be discussed in a later post) Here our target audience is pretty obvious: prospective students and faculty.

The second goal, to show off his own skills seems to smack of self-interest, but may in fact support the first goal. Who do students wish to learn from? Someone who has only theoretical knowledge of cartooning? Or someone who also happens to be a succcessful cartoonist? If I'm a potential student I'd love to learn from someone who has experience in the field, someone who can mentor me, and give me real world guidance for my career. Thus this goal serves both the purpose of our webmaster and serves to let his targeted audience know more about the quality of the faculty in the department. He can publish his cartoons (perhaps on his blog so that he can self-syndicate for more media exposure). If the newspapers then pick him up for syndication, he will enhance the reputation of the department while at the same time increasing its visibility in national media. Additionally prospective students and faculty have easy access to his work so that they can decide if they like his style and would want to work with him.

Our third goal pertains to the wonders of mechanical pencils. If our webmaster merely has some random fondness for pencils then I'd say leave it off the site. But what if the mechanical pencil is the preferred tool of the trade? What if there are specific drawing techniques that utilize this implement? Perhaps a section on drawing resources that points out the specific benefits and uses of mechanical pencils would be useful. If the site provides a comprehensive overview on the subject, then it is supplying valuable reference material to cartooning students not only at Case, but in the world at large. If this site becomes the place to learn about mechanical pencils, then more traffic is driven to the site and more people learn not only about pencils, but also of our cartooning program, and the university itself. Thus we are enhancing Case's reputation and visibility by providing a valuable resource.

Our fourth goal is also fairly silly. If he needs help developing his surfing superhero then maybe he should write about it on his personal blog. Or make it a class project. But then again perhaps he could launch a nationwide writing contest. Contestants would submit their entries to the website, he'd find a writer, and he'd also expose hundreds of aspiring comic book writers to the cartooning program at Case. Hmmmm.

What other goals has he forgotten? Who does this website serve? Aside from prospects, it will also serve current students, staff and faculty. What information should be provided to them? Office hours? Course descriptions? Resources for buying art supplies? History of the department? Event listings? All this and more. When developing the site, our webmaster should think about everything these people could possibly wish to know and determine of that what is practical to publish on the site.

Regarding our external markets, professional cartoonists, cartooning scholars, school children working on class projects, media, corporations, foundations, etc. what other resources might we provide that would be of use to them and supportive of our department's goals? If we provide resources on pencils, then should we provide resources on other topics? History of cartooning? The differences between political cartoons and sunday funnies? What would be of interest to researchers (From 3rd grade through postdoc) on this topic? What would be of interest to professional cartoonists? These are all things to consider. And as I've already written a rather lengthy missive, I'll leave you to do just that. Ponder everything that anyone could want from your site, consider the whys and wherefores and then refine your list of goals and target audiences.

Now that you've decided to make a site, you are probably thinking about colors, html and menus, etc. But just as one doesn't hit the ball in one's first tennis lesson, one doesn't start a website by jumping into the code.

Instead, the first question you should ask yourself is: WHY?

Why do you need the site?

Initial responses to this question often include things like:

• My boss said we need a site and she put me in charge because I'm good with computers.
• I want to learn HTML.
• I have 50 cute pictures of Rottweilers that I want to share with the world.

While those may be true, they're not the real reason you need to build the site. The real reason involves your goals. (If your goal is to learn HTML, then pick a topic with which you are familiar, and pick your goals accordingly. I'd recommend something with a narrow focus such as the wonderful things you can do with capers as opposed to the history of nanotechnology.)

What are your real goals?

Here at Case I find that goals tend to involve the distribution of basic information, dissemination of knowledge, and a marketing call to action.

Basic information usually includes the location of your office, hours you are available, a directory of staff and faculty in the department, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, etc.

Dissemination of knowledge involves the sharing of more in-depth information. Examples would include a biography of Bertolt Brecht, a tutorial on the double helix, your grandmother's compendium of apple pie recipes, information on configuring your e-mail program, or reviews of B Movies featuring creatures from other planets complete with cast lists, photos and the names of the costumers.

Marketing (for our purposes) means a call to action. What do you want people to do as a result of visiting your website? Examples might be:

• Apply for admission to your program.
• Attend events such as your gaming/pizzafest marathon.
• Donate money to a memorial scholarship fund.
• Read Chapters 12-15 before Tuesday's class.
• Participate in your research project.

Almost all of you will have one or more marketing goals.

So let's say you're the one with the 50 pictures of cute Rotties. What are your real reasons for building the site? Do you just want to share your photos with other Rottweiler fans? Do you want people to hire you to take pictures of their dogs? Do you want to educate the public about Rottweilers and dispel myths about their viciousness? Do you want to provide information about the care and training of Rottweilers so that their owners will treat them with the respect and affection they may need? All of the above? Something else?

Think carefully about this. When you have a clear idea of your goals we can go onto the next steps: Understanding your target audience and choosing the content you need to support your goals.

Happy July 4th!