Web Exercise Number 2 - Due Tuesday, January 24
Web Exercise Number 2 - Due Tuesday, January 24
For this exercise, you are to compose and publish a web page with at least five web sites that relate to the human geography of your chosen focus country. You will be graded on how well your five links relate to the topics covered by your textbook, as those topics pertain to the geography of your country, and how well your written descriptions actually describe each of your five websites.
Remember, you do not need to know how to write in "html" code. Various programs are available for creating web pages (Frontpage, Pagemill, etc.), but one easy way is to simply use MS-Word and save your file "as a web page" which then automatically generates the file in html format. Just use your word-processing skills and visit the help menu often. You will recall that James also kindly showed us a very nice WYSIWYG web authoring tool that is free to download, known as Nvu. Here is the Nvu FAQ page.
To learn how to first activate your network account, and other questions you may have about CWU computer access issues in general, see the ITS Student FAQ page.
The following links should provide you with enough information on creating and editing web pages using Dreamweaver, and uploading them to a publicly accessible site in your directory on the CWU server. You are encouraged to take advantage of the free 7 megs of cyberspace allocated to you on the CWU server: uploading web pages. See the Web Development FAQ page for further help. There is also a help line: (509) 962-5109.
If you wish to go with the CWU-supported web creation software, you'll need to learn the basics of the university's standard web page authoring software: Dreamweaver. This program is already loaded on most of the machines in the computer labs. Here is an Introduction to the Dreamweaver Environment. You may also wish to read: Setting up Dreamweaver. And here are additional instructions for creating a site. Don't worry about all the template instructions - these are for departments and staff to follow to make sure their official CWU web pages have the same consistent look.
As an alternative, you may publish your assignment as a web page to any server where you might already have an e-mail account and may have alloted space for web pages that are often free of charge (hotmail, geocities, yahoo, etc.). These commercial sites can assist you with setting up a web page address if you do not already have one.
In your listing of web links, you are to provide the title of each web page, the URL (web address beginning with http:// ...), and a two to three sentence descriptive critique of the site in your own words. See example and format for my chosen country of Fiji. Note that my URLs are active links, allowing you to visit each site listed. It is easy to link your URLs to the actual web site listed - just copy the URL and paste the location in where requested on your page to create a link. Try to include at least one map. The maps on the federal government websites maintained by the CIA and the Library of Congress are public domain and are free to copy and insert into your web page. Using other maps that you find on the internet could involve copyright isssues you may wish to avoid. Other graphics such as photos, charts, etc. add visual appeal, but don't get carried away - they make for longer download times. Limit your image files to no more than three or four. Remember that any graphics files (gifs or jpegs) that are "inserted" on to your web page are only simply present by a placeholder on your html file, and that you must also upload any graphic file to the same directory where your html file is uploaded. If using the CWU server, this would be the public_html subdirectory within the directory of your particular username. You access this via the Netstorage option of Wildcat Connection.
To complete this assignment, simply e-mail me (kuhlkenr@cwu.edu) by 5:00 PM on Tuesday January 24, the single URL of YOUR web page after publishing it (uploading this files), either to the CWU server or to some external server such as hotmail or yahoo.
Good luck and have fun.
Some suggested search engines: