Webwatch

Composing the website

In my last column, we talked in some detail on how a parish might begin to put together a website. Once you have a central idea for your site, you will need to begin to compose it. A year ago, you needed a good working knowledge of HTML (hyper-text markup language, the programming code for websites), but today, all you need is a webpage editor and a sense of graphic layout. Several programs are out there, both for free and for purchase. The major web browsers now come equipped with webpage editors. The Netscape version is called Netscape Gold. Microsoft's Internet Explorer 4.0 comes with a slightly scaled-down version of their FrontPage.
I like Microsoft's FrontPage Express, which comes with the full version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer. I use this one for my personal website as well as for the others I maintain. The nice thing about Netscape and IE is that they can be downloaded in their entirety off the web. Be patient; these files are not only quite large (more than 8Mb for Netscape, 22Mb for IE) but the sites where they are contained are accessed by lots of people all the time. I recommend you try first thing in the morning on a weekday, the earlier the better.
A webpage is really a collection of HTML files all linked together. The text and graphics all fit together on a series of pages. Before you do the layout, you need to have the components together. Each part should be typed on computer and saved either in plain-text (ASCII) format or saved in HTML (the latest word processors can save in this format). Pictures can easily be inserted into the site, but first you have to digitize them. For this, you either need a scanner or a digital camera. With a scanner, you can scan photographs and dump them right into the page. With a digital camera, you can take pictures that go not to film but directly to the computer. I like to take a high-resolution shot and then reduce it with a graphics editor like Paint Shop Pro. The smaller picture is called a thumbnail: when browsers click on it, the larger, high-res shot appears. But the smaller picture loads much more quickly.
When your text and graphics are ready, it is time to launch the webpage editor. Begin with a cover page, which should have a clean design. The name of the parish, its location, the pastor's name -- including all these is a good starting point. Perhaps you want to use a picture of your parish church building or of the assembly at prayer. You may want a brief introduction to what readers will find on the site.
Once you finish the cover page, you can add more pages like sections of a catalog. Hyper-links are underlined pieces of text you click on to get to another section of a website. Let us say the main page is called index.html. The section about religious education may be called re.html. In the text of the main page, you might have a heading that reads "Religious Education." Highlight that text and click on the icon that creates links.
There will be a place to put the name of the link; in FrontPage, it is labeled "URL:". Type the name of the file, in this case, re.html, hit return and you have created a hyper-link.
If you thought there was a lot of internet lingo before, you will learn even more when you get into creating your own webpage. Just remember, in any publication design, less is more.
Next time, we will discuss how the separate webpages you create will work as a whole to be the pastoral and evangelical tool you desire. We will look at overall design, and I will suggest ways to market your new website.