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Mastering A Web Site, Course Outline

Every Web Master is a gardener who must cultivate, weed, and care for all pages.

This document is an online archive and has had only minor corrections since it was last actively used in 2003.

May 2013 Note: This course had a good run. Although many of the USGS links are now antiquated, this is still a valid beginners reference. If it were being taught now there would be greater emphasis on html5, mobile computing and javascript. CSS has come a long way in browser support and there is no longer any excuse for using in-line formatting.

1. WELCOME (Introduction)

   • The care and feeding of Web Sites, a few references
   • What is the World Wide Web
   • What is a URL?

2. HTML

   • HTML defined
   • HTML 3.2 vs. HTML 4.0 vs. HTML 4.01
   • Xhtml
   • Learning HTML
     • Block Elements
     • Lists
     • Inline Markup
     • Links and Comments
     • Images
     • Tables and more Tables
     • Special Characters
   • The Case for Valid html

3. CASCADING STYLE SHEETS

   • Style Sheet levels, 1-3
   • Browser Support of CSS
   • What does "Cascading" mean?
   • How does this relate to html 3.2 formatting?
   • What can you do with style sheets?
   • How do I Associate a style sheet with an html document?
   • Mixing Style Sources
   • CSS units
   • Simple Examples of CSS
   • CSS, White Space, space within and around paragraphs
   • CSS, Text Justification
   • CSS, Fonts
   • CSS, Boxes
   • CSS, Pseudo-Classes
   • The Cascading Style Sheet used for the Course

4. GRAPHICS AND COLOR

   • Size (cut down on "Net Lag")
   • Gif vs. JPEG vs. PNG
   • Color palette
   • Transparency
   • Interlacing
   • Reuse
   • Platform differences (resolution, color, etc)
   • Vector graphics
   • Tools for editing images

5. IMAGEMAPS

   • Image maps defined
   • Image map tools
   • Implementing image maps
   • Constructing client-side image maps

6. IN THE ABSENCE OF GRAPHICS

   • The Audience -- Who is browsing without graphics
   • User-friendly guidelines
   • Proper Use of the ALT Tag

7. ACCESSIBILITY

   • Section 508, an extension of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)
   • Make Web Pages Accessible to Those With Disabilities
   • HTML 4 Extensions for Accessibility
   • WAI Rating Scheme
   • Summary of WAI Priority-1 Guidelines
   • Summary of WAI Priority 2 guidelines
   • Building an Accessible Table
   • Building an Accessible Form
   • Accessibility Tools and References

8. STYLE AND FORMAT

   • Visual Identity
   • An Outline of the Elements of the USGS Visual Identity for the Web

9. WEB DOCUMENT CHECKLIST

   • Preparing the document
   • Quality Assuring the document
   • HTML Document Preparation Summary

10. HTML EDITORS

    • Enhanced text editors
    • HTML based
    • Sort of WYSIWYG
    • Multi-file editing

11. HTML CONVERTERS

    • Word processor/Page Layout
    • Text, tables
    • Email

12. DREAMWEAVER

    • Overview of many DreamWeaver capabilities presented by Michelle Munroe of System 2 (when this course is taught at the National Training Center in Denver)

13. CGI AND FORMS

    • What is cgi?
    • Form Methods
    • Writing Forms, form elements

14. SERVER SIDE INCLUDES

    • Server Side Includes are not standardized.
    • Examples of directives IF, ECHO, EXEC, INCLUDE, and others
    • Enabling

15. SITE MAINTENANCE

    • Insure Link integrity
    • Insure Content integrity
    • Web Server log files

16. THE OUTSIDE WEB

    • DNS names
    • Virtual Hosting
    • Copyright
    • Site rating
    • Linking to Commercial Sites

17. HOW SEARCH ENGINES WORK

    • A Web Master's guide to search engines
    • Search-able pages, how to be found
    • How Web Pages are Found
    • How to keep pages from being indexed
    • Favorites Icon

18. HIJACKING, EMAIL HARVESTERS, AND OTHER MAYHEM

    • Various forms of identity and content hijacking
    • E-mail harvesting
    • Issues that will affect Web users

19. THE USGS WIDE WEB

    • USGS Web Masters Information
    • Presentation on latest USGS Web initiatives
    • THE USGS SEARCH ENGINE
    • Site Registration
    • Meta tags
    • Limiting a search using Collections

20. SECURITY

    • General, CGI and SSI
    • System Security, UNIX and Windows
    • Access Control, Host and User Authentication (password protection for web pages)
    • The Anonymizer

21. Bibliography

Lab Exercises

A Keyword Search of The Course.

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Created and maintained by Lorna Schmid and David Boldt. http://water.usgs.gov/usgs/training/webmaster/index.html     Last modified: Thu Mar 31 13:46:32 EST 2005