William M. Pegram
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Web Site Proposal and Project

Revised: May 28, 2008

Proposal

The first step is to think of one or more ideas for a web site.  The most important thing here is to pick something that you want to do because this will help you devote the time necessary to do a good project.  Feel free to consult with the instructor if you have trouble thinking of ideas or are not sure whether a particular topic would be appropriate. .

Most students projects have not been done for a client.  In these "client-less" sites, the material from the site is taken from books or the internet, or written/developed by the student.  A few students have done websites for organizations or companies with which they are affiliated.  Doing a website for a client is good experience but either you have to be in a position to provide the content (e.g. you are involved with the organization) or the client must provide you content in a timely fashion.

Once you have chosen a topic, it is very helpful to think through the project before you start coding.  Writing things down in a proposal will help in this process and will give others a chance to comment before you start coding.  This allows you to get valuable feedback and get stakeholders to "buy in" to your proposal. Doing the site proposal will probably take you 2-3 hours for a very simple site..

The web site proposal need not be more than a page of text, although you may find that 2-3 pages are needed, and should address the following elements.  The answer to each element should ignore the fact that you are doing this for a class.  For example; the purpose of the site is not to pass the course, or learn more about web site design, and the instructor or your classmates are not the intended audience.

• Similar sites review - Looking at "similar" sites is a great sort of ideas; reviewing a few (2-4) carefully is more important than reviewing many.  You should list the URL and title of the site, and cover the aspects of the site that are relevant to your project.
• Purpose - In a sentence, what is the purpose of the site?
• Intended audience - Keeping in mind your audience(s) helps you decide what content to include and how much you should explain
• Goals - Listing specific goals of the site will often be useful in deciding on specific content for the site
• Site structure - what elements do you want on each page, navigational structure -- drawing pictures (storyboards) for this is probably the best way to communicate this 

When you are proposing to revise an existing site, it is very important that you be as specific as you can about the changes you propose to make.  As with other proposals, this is not a commitment on your part; only a statement of intentions.

Although the written proposal will be provided to the instructor, feel free to solicit oral comment as you are developing the proposal.

Project

What constitutes "better" is subjective, but the most important factors are probably:

• appropriate XHTML coding - e.g. descriptive <title> tags; alt, height and width attributes in <img> tags, HTML comments to source images or text or document JavaScript, resizing of images in graphics program, observing XHTML rules rather than looser HTML rules, etc.
• page layout, use of colors, images, and fonts; readability
• content: Is the content on the web site appropriate for the intended audience? 
• navigation: Do the links work? Is the navigation scheme logical and easy to understand?
• technical difficulty (e.g., number of pages and images, did you create the images, etc.)
• robustness of site to different monitor resolutions, connection speeds, and browsers
• appropriate use of CSS and JavaScript

The web site must be created using Notepad or another text editor or with a WYSIWYG editor such as Adobe Dreamweaver, Microsoft Front Page, Netscape Composer, etc.  You must not use a word processor and "Save as HTML."  The exception to this is that if you have documents that already exist in Word, you may save them as HTML.   

Web sites should have the following

• At least four pages (except in very unusual cases)
• At least one image - a picture or graphic, and it need not be original
• Except in rare cases, a table or CSS for layout, or a table to present data
• At least one relative link
• At least one absolute link to another site
• At least one mailto link
• Descriptive title tags on all pages
• Alt, height, and width attributes in all img tags
• Attribution within the site or in HTML comments for all images and text taken from elsewhere
• If graphics are resized, they should almost always be resized in a graphics program rather than with the
• height and width attributes of the img tag
• No spaces in file and folder names
• Home page of project should normally be an index.html or index.htm file The best way to do this is to create a project folder within your website where the home page of your project is an index.html or index.htm file within this folder

Students usually do a site to be hosted on the internet. However, you may do a site for a CD or DVD if that form of delivery makes more sense.