UNIT 6 > MODULE 3

Lesson 1: Overview of Site Management Features

Overview

Few web pages exist in isolation. Most are part of larger websites, with complex webs of links between pages. Large organizations typically have web design teams - large groups of designers working on various components of a site simultaneously. Managing the design and maintenance of large websites can be organizationally challenging. However, web authoring software provides a variety of features that assist in this process. This lesson provides an overview of some of those features.

Learner Outcomes

At the completion of this exercise, you will be able to:

• describe the benefits of using web authoring software for managing websites.
• identify features within their web authoring software that facilitate site management.

What can you do with site management features?

The following is a list of some of the common site management features available in web authoring software. Some software comes bundled with these features. Other software requires the installation of plug-ins or extensions, many of which are availalble for free from the vendor website. A few of the features listed below may not be available in all web authoring products.

• Check your entire website for broken links.
• Change links sitewide with a single command.
• Automatically update internal site links if a filename is changed.
• Check your entire site for missing alt text and other accessibility problems.
• Check your entire site for common HTML errors.
• Check your entire site for compatibility across multiple browsers
• Lock files to prevent two team members from modifying a file simulateously.
• Manage workflow: See which team members worked on which files on which dates.

Activities

• Your instructor will lead you through a discussion of website management, including how web design teams utilize web authoring software to manage their websites.
• Following discussion, explore your web authoring software, and try to identify which of the above features your software seems to support. Be prepared to discuss what you've found with your instructor and the rest of the class.
• Set up a website using your own web authoring software. Use the website you created manually in Unit 5 as the site content, so all you have to do is define this as your site within your web authoring software. See the Examples section below for how to do this in popular web authoring software programs.
• Once you have setup your website, test five or more of the website management features from the above list on your own websites. Choose features that generate reports, and print those reports to hand in to your instructor. If the reports show problems (e.g., bad links, missing alt text, etc.) correct the problems and re-run the report and print it again so you can show evidence that the problems have been corrected.

Examples

The following examples assume you already have a website, but are wanting to setup that website so that the specified web authoring software program recognizes it. This step is necessary in order to use the software's site features on your site. Each of the programs mentioned below have seperate well-documented procedures for creating a website from scratch.

Dreamweaver

To set up your website using Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004, follow these steps:

1. Using the menu, select Site > Manage Sites.
2. Select the New... button, then select Site.
3. This launches the Site Definition wizard, which walks you through the process of setting up your site.
4. Now that your site has been defined within Dreamweaver, you can use a variety of Dreamweaver's site features, most of which are available within the Site menu.

FrontPage

To set up a website using Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003, follow these steps:

1. Using the menu, select File > Open Site .
2. In the Open Site dialog, browse to the folder where your website is stored.
3. FrontPage will then notify you that it needs to add information to your folder in order to help manage your hyperlinks and other website content. This information is contained within in a folder named _private and two hidden folders named _vti_cnf and _vti_pvt.
4. Once the site has been created, its settings can be modifed using the application menu by selecting Tool > Site Settings.
5. Now that your site has been defined within FrontPage, you can use a variety of FrontPage's site features, many of which are located in the Tools menu.

All done?

Hand in your printed reports to your instructor.

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