Web Authoring Issues

What do I need to do first?

Surprisingly, one of the most frequently-neglected aspects of web authoring is also the most fundamental: web authoring is authoring. All of the same issues arise that are common to any other type of authoring endeavor. Don't let overconcern with technical details blind you to this basic fact.

• Decide what you want to say.

  In all forms of authorship, there is something the author wants to express. Whether you are talking about an essay, a sales brochure, a report, a novel, a painting, or even simply graffiti, there is a purpose, a message to be conveyed. This may be informational, persuasive, or simply emotive, but if you don't have any idea what you want to say, you aren't ready to write yet. This is as true of the web as it is of anything else. A good web page has a purpose, and if the author is unclear about what this purpose is, the visitor to the site will probably be equally in the dark. (Hint: "I think I ought to have a web page..." probably isn't a clear enough sense of purpose.)

  Some possible reasons for putting up a web page:

  Personal Pages -- For your own use

  • Personal Sitelist. A browser's "hotlist" or "bookmark" files are local; if you browse the web from more than one place, these are useless to you. If you place frequently-used or important links on your own web page, you can always get to them.
  • Presentation Slides. Rather than carrying slides or transparencies around, you can use the web as a place to keep notes and figures that you want to use in teaching a class or seminar (assuming, of course, that the classroom or auditorium you will be using has a network-connected computer and projection equipment available).

  Personal Pages -- For others to see

  • Introducing Yourself. You can use the web as a place to tell other people all about yourself and your interests. Keep in mind that you are publishing this. Before you tell too much, ask yourself two questions regarding each detail you plan to include: Will anyone really care? and, more importantly, Do I really want everyone to know this?
  • Good Information to have on your page:
    • Your name.
    • Your department or major.
    • Your title (faculty and staff) or class year (students)
    • Office location (faculty and staff)
    • Contact information such as snail mail address and email address.
  • Showcasing Your Work. Whether you are a novelist, an illustrator, a researcher, a cartoonist, or a poet, the web can be a place where you can share your creations with others. Even if what you produce cannot be directly placed on the web (imagine if you were a home builder), you may be able to put up pictures and descriptions of it. You can also publish your credentials (a resume or curriculum vita is a common feature of many people's personal pages).
  • Instructor's Pages. You can put up course descriptions, syllabi, readings, homework assignments, exercises and problems, sample solutions, take-home exams, or other material you want to share with your class.
  • Special Topic Pages. This often begins as an extension of the "personal sitelist" idea, but with the specific purpose of sharing what you've found with others who might be similarly interested. (You should strive to add some value beyond merely providing an index to other people's work.)

  Departmental or Organizational Pages

  • Descriptions of the department or organization, and of the units or programs that it comprises. Organizational charts, statements of mission or purpose, and other similar items might be included.
  • Lists of products or services provided by the group, and contact information regarding how to obtain those products or services.
  • Group membership. Lists of faculty or staff, their titles, duties, areas of responsibility and interests. This may include contact information (office room number, e-mail address, office telephone, fax, or beeper numbers, or links to personal home pages), credentials (if resumes and such are maintained by the group, rather than the individual), and so on.
  • Schedules and event descriptions. Deadline dates, hours of operation, class times and locations, or other information about when and where to go and how to get there.
  • Research databases, bibliographies, documentation, procedure manuals, or other types of departmental publications.

  These are just some basic ideas on where to begin. If you need other sources of inspiration, try looking at web pages created by others who are in a situation similar to your own, and see what sorts of things they are doing.

• Keep your reader in mind.

  No matter how compelling your vision for your page may be, it is useless unless someone out there is both willing and able to read it. Just as with any other form of writing, you have to bear in mind the interests, capabilities, and limitations of your intended audience if you expect your site to be a success. Write for your audience. A little effort invested into trying to imagine why a reader might be interested in what you have to say, and in saying it in a way that is engaging to that person, will usually be well worth it.

  In deciding whom you are writing for, you may want to consider whether the purpose of the pages you are creating is personal or professional, internal (to Lehigh) or external, or some combination. Typical audiences might be:

  • Individuals with whom you share a particular interest
  • Individuals you serve as part of your job function
  • Individuals in your department or class
  • Everyone at Lehigh University
  • The local community: everyone in the Lehigh Valley
  • The academic community: everyone working at or attending a college or university
  • The Internet community: everyone in the world (well, almost)

  Keep in mind that the web is world-wide; this gives you a virtually unlimited potential readership to draw upon, but it also makes everything you put on-line the equivalent of international publication. Remember to treat this medium accordingly (if you wouldn't post it on the bulletin board at the local community center, you probably shouldn't put it on the web).

• Don't forget the mechanics.

  All of the same rules apply on the web that apply anywhere else. When you write, you still need to pay attention to grammar, spelling, punctuation, and style. You still need to organize your thoughts and express them as clearly as you can, using a form and tone appropriate to your purpose. The style and structure of your writing is, if anything, more important on the web than on paper, not less. When you create graphics, such concerns as composition and color harmony are still just as critical on the web as they would be for slides for a presentation or for an article in a journal.

The important point here is, before you worry too much about the ways in which web authoring is different from other types of authoring--and there are differences that should not be overlooked--spend a little time paying attention to the ways in which they are the same.

How do I put it all together?

The key to a successful web creation is the way you get all the parts to work together. Remember that the web is hypertext. The structure of the entire "work" is at least as important as the structure of any of the individual "documents" that make it up. This structure can be simple and linear, or it may be basically hierarchical, or it can be extremely complex. How an individual visitor experiences your site may depend upon the path he or she takes through it. There are several aspects to this which you should consider in your design.

• Help the visitor construct a "mental map" of the site.

  As visitors navigate their way through your site, trying to figure out where they want to go and trying to keep straight where they've been, each is going to create an internalized model, or "mental map" to help make sense of it all. You can help or hinder this process. If you help make the overall structure clearer, the visitor will be much more comfortable and will be able to find desired information much more quickly. Provide plenty of "road signs" to inform the visitor of where he or she is, and what's coming next. Try to ensure that when you present alternatives, you provide enough information so that the visitor can make a choice with confidence, and will know what to expect when the destination is reached. Too many surprises--even pleasant ones--can make the visitor feel lost.

• .

What are the pitfalls?

Web authoring has some special traps for the unwary. Some of these are also problems for other types of authoring, but the combinations that occur in web authoring are unique. Here are some of the most important issues to consider:

• Web publishing is not like paper publishing.

  Which things are under control of the author, and which are under control of the reader, are distinctly different. Details of layout, typeface and font size, and even color scheme--all of which would normally be under the control of the author and publisher--can be changed by the reader. It can be very challenging to come up with a design that is sufficiently flexible to accomodate the reader to this extent and still be both good-looking and useable (and the more complex and sophisticated the design, the harder this part of the job becomes).

• Client hardware and software differs.

  If you wish to reach the largest possible audience (and not alienate potential visitors to your site), you may need to do additional work to allow for these differences. Visitors have differently-sized screens, and can change the size and shape of their viewing window; some may have fast connections, others may be much slower; some may only be capable of directly viewing text (some may even be blind, and may be using special software to read the pages to them out loud); the browsers and their capabilities differ (including which versions and features of HTML they support); and not all machines may be configured with the same helpers, plug-ins, and system extensions, all of which play a role in delivering certain media types or in handling specialized file formats.

• Multimedia is seductive.

  The ability to use flashy and attention-getting devices such as animation, sound, and interactive images is one of the key reasons for the impact that web sites can have on the reader. This is perhaps the most important factor responsible for the popularity of the web.

  However, there is a very strong temptation to concentrate on style to the detriment of substance. Some web authors are so excited by the latest tricks and features, that they feel that pages should employ these, whether or not the purpose of the page requires them, and they may neglect more mundane aspects of authoring, such as organization, clarity, grammar, and spelling. Another potential pitfall is that attention-getting devices may do their job too well; they may distract the reader from the content of the page. Simplicity of design is a virtue that is often overlooked.

• Hypertext is also seductive.

  This is usually a more subtle problem. There is a tendency to want to link everything to everything else, and the profusion of links can often lead a reader to wonder whether he or she has seen everything. Also, some pages can turn out to be nothing more than navigation aids, virtually devoid of any real content themselves. This can easily lead to a situation where readers must traverse a whole series of pages before finally reaching the information that they're after. (If the information at the end of the chase isn't worthwhile, the reader may well feel cheated.)

• Interactivity on the web is not like interaction with most software.

  Each page that the visitor retrieves is an independent transaction. There is no "session" or continuous connection with the host site. This makes it difficult to track the vistor's progress through the site, or to control what he can do or see based on where he has been. Each page must therefore be completely self-contained. (Admittedly, this is more of a problem for sites using forms, and other relatively advanced web features; it is not usually as crucial for beginning web authors.)

• Web publishing is a commitment.

  It has been said that the only true constant is change, and this is nowhere more true than on the web. Unlike most other types of publications--where once you publish it, it's finished--web pages are expected to change constantly. One of the great virtues of the web is that, since it is so easy to make information available, it is also easy to change it. Furthermore, the person who creates the information is usually the person who puts up the page, so there are fewer intermediaries. This means web pages can be (and to many people's way of thinking, should be) the most up-to-date source of information there is. Many of the people who use the web heavily rely on this, and are very frustrated by stagnant pages that contain nothing but obsolete information. You should be prepared to maintain any pages you create.

What about hiring someone to create pages for me?

This can be a very good idea. However, realistically, there are a few possible problems to consider. A professional may be able to do things that you would find difficult or impossible, and may turn out a very handsome and polished finished product, but professionals can also turn out to be very expensive. A professional might be able to give you an estimate and do the work for a fixed fee. However, if you do not clearly communicate exactly what you want, you might not be very pleased with what you get, and the pro is not likely to be willing to endlessly make changes until the result is "just right", at least not without additional fees.

Students are often less expensive, but the creation of your pages may not be their top priority, and they may require more time and supervision. You have less certainty about the end product: while many students are extremely talented, and some are very skilled as well, others may not be as good and you generally have no reliable way of gauging this in advance. You may get results that are the equal of the best that a professional could do in every respect; or you may not. Students are more likely than a professional to be willing to adjust things until you get exactly what you are looking for, but they are also probably going to get paid by the hour. In this case, poor planning or a lack of preparation on your part can cause the site to still turn out to be very expensive in the long run, even though the costs seem lower. With student labor, you need to be even more certain you know exactly what you want, because the student may not have the experience to know what questions to ask. Also, you need to be very careful to ensure that the student clearly understands your values, goals, and priorities in the creation of pages.

For instance, a typical student might emphasize:

• Pages designed around large, flashy, attention-getting graphics or containing a lot of animation and sounds
• Using the latest and most technically advanced and challenging features or incorporating clever and nifty "tricks"
• Treating the site as a work of art, which should be approached in a certain way to be "properly appreciated"; this means controlling layout, how information is presented, and the order a a visitor is expected to follow when viewing your pages.

On the other hand, you might actually be more interested in ensuring:

• That you reach the widest possible audience with the greatest amount of useful information; excluding (or offending) no potential visitor, and making sure that key information is accessible.
• That the site is maintainable: You know where everything is, why it's there, how it works, and can easily make (or have someone else--not necessarily the original author--make for you) any changes as they are needed, so your site stays up-to-date.
• Empowering your visitor, so that he or she can easily and quickly find exactly what is needed, in whatever fashion seems most natural for him or her.

These goals are not completely inconsistent, but which goals the author puts foremost will have a lot to do with how the site is designed and executed. In any case, even if someone else is going to construct the site for you, it helps for you to have some knowledge of HTML and web authoring technique. That way, you know what is possible and what isn't; you can evaluate the results, and recognize whether the person did a good job or a sloppy one; and you will have some idea of how difficult it will be to keep the information on the site current, which you must do if the site is to be useful or interesting to anyone.