Website Checklist

1. Print Office Webmaster’s Name ______________________________________________________________________The office webmaster may never edit pages, upload documents, or do HTML, but it is the person who is in charge of managing the process and working with the programmers and webmasters.

CHECK HERE

2. Create Section DocumentThe section document will outline the grouping of all the resources on your website. The sections most likely will become your website’s navigation.

3. Create Resource DocumentYour resources are your electronic documents that will go on your website. They include Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, forms, PDFs, paper documents, reports, outlines, logos, photographs, etc.

4. Put Resources on CDGather all of your resources and burn them to a CD. The resource document will be the index for all the documents on the CD.

5. Story Board (Mock-up Pages/Navigation)Use paper/pencil, Word, or a whiteboard to illustrate roughly how you want your website to look. Bring these illustrations with you to the graphic designer and/or webmaster.

6. Identify Dynamic ResourcesIdentify resources on your website that are not electronic files. Meet with the webmaster or programmer about these resources.

7.Graphics/Logos/PrototypeWork with the graphic designer to create a graphic prototype of your website. Here you determine where to put your logo, how to repeat your navigation, or other fancy graphic combination you may want.

Have the executive director look at the section document, the resource document and the mock-up pages and have him or her sign here:

______________________________________________________________________

Provide All to Webmaster for HTML Development This document Section document Resource document CD with all resources Story board/mock-up pages/graphics/logos/prototype

Website Development Guidelines

1. Determine Goal, Audience, and Office Webmaster2. Determine Sections and Section Names3. Identify Resources 4. Gather or Develop Resources 5. Storyboard Navigation6. Flowchart Dynamic Data and Data Collection7. Prototype: Develop Layout and Graphic Elements8. HTML Implementation 9. Database Creation10. Programming11. Set Section Priority and Build

1. Determine Goal and Audience Web is a medium with these characteristics: Data driven (content is king) Always current (2001 content is ancient content) Always accessible (website available 24 hours a day) Accessible worldwide (is world network)

Determine who in your office is the office webmaster. The office webmaster may never edit pages, upload documents, or do HTML, but it is the person who is in charge of managing the process and working with programmers and webmasters. If the programmer or web person has a question, the office webmaster is the point of contact for that office’s web presence. You may have multiple office webmasters for different sections, but somebody has to be the owner of the content on the website. Determine who your primary audience is. The primary audience is the group of people who will account for 50 percent or more of your visits. Identify this audience and focus on its needs. Know before you start where the data is coming from for this website. Do we have it or do we have to create the content? You will have to know who has it or who will have to create it. Information that is not fresh on the web is dead information. A website from 2002 is an ancient website. Plan who will be updating the data or providing updates on the website. WHO is going to provide fresh data to the office webmaster? If the person updating the website is the office webmaster then a step is taken out of the equation. The web is a data-driven medium: content is king. Layout, navigation and graphic design should fall within the purpose and the content provided. As you determine the purpose of the website, we can start deciding on what platform we would like to use to develop the site. Ask yourself: Is there a need for this data? Why are we putting this online? If you don’t have a clear answer, then don’t put it online.

Has a number of audience members requested this, or have we decided they need this? Identify items you have to publish first, followed by the items your audience wants you to publish, then work on items you think they need. We have several forums and listservs because we thought they were a good idea, but the audience didn’t ask for them, so nobody used them in the end.

2. Determine Sections and Section Names Create a Word document and call it sections (a template is attached) You need to group your website into section – every resource on your website will be filed under a section. Feel free to create subsections.

The way we categorize should be driven by the way your visitors look for information. Your sections most likely will become your navigation for the website. You can have sections based on the information you are grouping, based on the type of audience, based on importance or timelines of information: Information Grouping: Department Section: staff, calendar, offices, vacancies, etc. Audience Grouping: Teachers Section: jobs, certification, lesson plans Importance or Timelines: Latest Info: latest news, hot items, coming up events, most requested Pick one type of grouping only (if you can)! The name of the sections should match your audience expectations: data, reports, resources, documents, forms are samples of names of what can be one section, what is the culture of your audience? The sections will give you the roadmap and big picture to your website; they are the blueprints, the drawers where you will file all the resources you offer. Decide and write in the section document the name of the sections and a brief description on what will go there.

3. Identify Resources Create a Word document and call it resources (a template is attached). Your resources are your meat, your data, your content. It includes your Word documents, your PowerPoint presentations, paper documents. Resources will ultimately turn into links. Write in the resources document The name – what do you call this resource? Planning Guide, Policy 1200 The forecast – in one sentence explain what do you get when you click on the resources The owner – who is the person who developed/wrote the resources, answers questions, and provides the resource to the office webmaster The format – the electronic format: Word, PowerPoint, text, paper. If the resources don’t exist, mark here that they need to be created or developed The section/subsection – under what section are we publishing this resources

The filename – name of the file of this resource

Write forecasts from the audience perspective and picture your audience as a 10-year-old child who knows nothing about you or your office. Examples:

NAME FORECAST OWNER SECTION Current FORMAT

Final FORMAT

FILENAME ON CDOr

URL for LINK

Policy 1230 Freedom of Information

Request

Marlene Price Policies WordWord

p1230.doc

Superintendent Interpretations

Interpretations are legal documents which provide 

answers to specific questions related to the WV Code 

and Education, as well as State 

Board Policies and other legal references

legal office, Marlene Price

Interpretations Section WORDHTML

Directory interpretations in CD

There are static resources and dynamic resources. Static resources are WebPages, downloadable documents, descriptions, PowerPoint presentations. They don't interact with your audience. For the most part, they are either downloaded or viewed. Dynamic resources are online forms, web applications, registrations, surveys They are resources that require interaction from the user and are dependent of their input. An online form has to be completed. A teacher certification status form will sit there until a teacher provides his or her information and a dynamic page based on individual input is provided. Online courses have both static and dynamic resources.

It is also important that you know what format resources are, and what format you want them to appear on the website to know if we need to transform them for example from Word into PDF, or into an HTML file. Word Documents and Word Forms: Need to be downloadable as one document. They need Word to view it. They can make changes to document for their own use. PowerPoint Presentations: Download as one document, they need PowerPoint to see it, they can make changes. HTML documents (WebPages): They will be viewed online in the browser PDF documents: Download as one document. They need free viewer. The content cannot be changed.

Online Forms: dynamic resources. They need to be programmed. They can be viewed online. They can collect data into a database. Graphics: viewed inside the browser, they can also be downloaded by visitors. WordPerfect, RTF, PageMaker, Excel Sheets, Access Databases, Comma Delimited Files are other examples If they don't fall into any category above, are they dynamic? Are we talking about developing an online application?

4. Gather or Develop each Resource (Electronically) All resources should be put onto a CD The resource document will be the index to all files on the CD The office webmaster is in charge of gathering all these documents from their owners. Copy the section document, and the resource Document onto the CD as well.

5. Story Board the Navigation

Create mock-up pages and with arrows identify what goes where. Place the section buttons Place a header and footer for all pages Place the logo and other graphic items that will repeat from page to page

This is where we determine top navigation, side navigation, headers, footers, information on all pages, do we want logos, round buttons, blue buttons, floating boxes, news on homepage, static homepage. Make as many notes as you can about what you expect to see. You can create this story board with a pencil on a piece of paper, with Word, we can meet and create it on a white board, you can put it on a napkin, the main idea is that you draw your idea for the designers and webmasters. Because of our efforts to use one template, this step may not be needed, but you may have some ideas of what to see. Create this so all parties can see how you want the website to look.

Steps 1 to 5 can be done internally by the office staff led by the office webmaster. These steps decide the mission and the vision of the website, and gather all resources needed to start talking with developers and webmasters. The steps above are the most time consuming and most challenging.

6. Flowchart Dynamic resources

If you have web applications or dynamic resources, meet with a webmaster or programmer to flesh these out. We will need to determine where the data is where is going, how to navigate from screen to screen, authentication, reports.

7. Prototype: Layout and Graphic Design At this point using your section document, your resource document, and your storyboard navigation the webmasters/graphic designer can start creating a prototype of pages for your feedback. If logos, buttons, titles need to be created now is the time to work with graphics if they don’t exists they can develop them for you. The webmasters will mock up some pages for the group to look at before deciding to go ahead or adjust the design. If the layout needs to be highly graphical, graphic design will do a mock-up before going into HTML (actual web pages) If the layout is determined and not significant graphic design is going to be needed, the prototype can be the start of the website.

8. HTML Implementation After the design has been approved by signature by the office webmaster and executive director, a resources document and all the resources have been collected, and the section document has been completed, we can start implementing the website. Webmaster starts taking all static resources, sections, and storyboard and starts developing the websites in HTML. At this point, all names, forecasts, images, etc. are put together using Dream weaver, Photoshop, Illustrator and live website testing begins. Most decisions of what the website is going to have, look like, and navigate have been decided. The webmaster is ready to put them together.

9. Database creation (dynamic resources) If databases are going to be needed, this is the time they get created Steps 8, 9 and 10 happen at similar times based on priority. Database data collection has to be supplied by the office webmaster and a form of data collection approval has been signed by the West Virginia Education Information System (WVEIS) office.

10. Programming (Dynamic Resources) Any online forms, dynamic applications, or web programming happen at this time. What goes on here is managed by the programmer and the parties involved. Check with your programmer to determine the timeline, steps, necessary data, etc.

11. Section Priority Not everything can be done at the same time so a priority order needs to be given to the webmasters to identify in what sequence the sections need to be built. Make the decision based on your primary audience or emergency needs, but only one thing at a time can be done correctly. After priority No. 1 is done, start on priority No. 2.

A complex section becomes its own website. A subwebsite normally has sections of its own, a rather large list of resources, or may have its own dynamic resources. A subwebsite has to be approached as its own entity with this process. You need to look at each subwebsite and apply everything on this document -- specially step 1 to step 6. A section that is a subwebsite is a website of its own. Plan that anything dynamic is going to take more time than anything not dynamic. The time it takes to develop is exponentially affected by the features in the dynamic application.

Make sure the priority box in the section document is filled out.Section DocumentWrite down the name of the sections on your website, with a brief description of each. After all sections are written down, write a No. 1 next to the section with the highest priority, then a

No. 2 on the section that should be developed next, No. 3 on the third highest, etc.

Priority Section Name Description

Resource Document

NAME FORECAST OWNER SECTION Current FORMATFinal FORMAT

FILENAME ON CD

Policy 1230 Freedom of Information Request Marlene Price Policies WordHTML

p1230.doc