Class Site: moving forward and thinking technical

By the end of this week we'll need to have a solid idea about what our website is, and exactly who will be contributing what.

Today we need to:

• Pinpoint what we want our site to be
• Come up with a name and register a domain
• Begin deciding what each of you will do to contribute to the site. This includes choosing someone to be in charge of the site's home page, or front page.
• Set up a forum on Blackboard and begin our collaborative discussion.

Additionally, today we'll talk about some of the most foundational concepts of web design and function, including HTML and CSS. These sound like technical terms (and they are), but don't let that frighten you yet - if you are a non-technical person, you'll be able to do much of your web design in Dreamweaver, which has a graphical interface. We'll get into that next week!

In learning this material, I highly encourage you to become familiar with the site w3schools.com. It's an excellent resource for learning the basics of most aspects of site creation, and it's free. There are many sites out there that document different tools and tricks, so look around. Also, when working on the computer, Google has always been my best friend - don't ever underestimate the power of the internet to provide useful answers, because if you have a technical problem or question, there is almost always a documented instance of someone having and solving the exact same problem. In most cases (I'd say 97% of the time), I'm able to find useful solutions to my questions, no matter how specific.