Conceptualizing Your Web Site The first thing you need to do before you even begin to use the Home Page Construction Kit is to give some thought to the information that you wish to present on your web site.  The key to the Home Page Construction Kit is to design the main page of your site and then duplicate it, replacing only the content so that your web site has a professional, consistent look.  This means you need to consider what topics will require a separate link.  Each link will require a separate document. Take a minute to view current web sites of other organizations similar to yours to get some ideas as to what might be appropriate.  Some examples for a school district might be: For a School Web Site Mission Statement/Goals Contact Information Homework Guidelines Code of Conduct Parent Advisory Council Information School Calendar School Location School Hours Current Newsletter Link to District Web Site School Library Sporting Events Celebration Events For a Teacher Home Page Homework Policy Course Outlines Current Homework Related Web Sites Resources Behaviour Expectations Class/Course Calendar The Banner Image If you want to have an image displayed across the top of each of your pages, you will have to design this in a graphics program of your choice and save it as a jpeg (jpg), gif or png image.  There are many applications for both the Macintosh and Windows computers that will allow you to create these kind of images.  A common choice for an image is a jpeg file that is created by a digital camera.   You can use your photo editing software to crop and enhance the photo.  What is most important is that you determine the height and width of the photo in pixels as you will need to have that information available if you are going to scale the image in your header.  All is not lost however, if you cannot determine the pixel dimensions.  What you will need to know however, is the proportion of height to width. Colour Scheme A colour scheme for your web site is extremely important.  The Home Page Construction Kit version 3 comes with 13 pre-set colour schemes that have been carefully selected to present a professional looking web site.  You can always choose the 'Custom' option to modify one of the colour schemes or design your own from scratch.   if you are going to design your own colour scheme, check out the Web Colours section to see what your choices are.  You will need to decide what your background colour  (don't forget white), Headline, Sidebar, Features and other highlight colours are going to be.  Though the Home Page Construction Kit gives you lots of flexibility and freedom to choose, it is suggested that you stick with a minimal number of colours as demonstrated by the examples given in the Introduction. Site Style With Home Page Construction Kit version 3 you have a choice of 3 different site styles.  You can choose from Classic, Tabs or Roll Over. Link Location -Top Navigation Strip, Buttons, or Side Column? Once you have decided on the content, you must decide which, if any, of the links are buttons across the top below the banner, in a top navigation strip or in the side navigation column. Top Navigation Strip Classic Tab Roll Over You can have an unlimited number of links that will be displayed in a navigation strip below the header section of your home page.  As the mouse rolls over the link, the background changes. Button Bar You can have any number of buttons (limited only by screen space).  Check out the Homepage Buttons section to see what your choices are.  This document will also explain how you can use your own custom buttons.  The display titles are up to you so do not be overly concerned with the names of the buttons.  The names are for reference only. Side Navigation Column The Side Navigation Column will accommodate an unlimited number of links, each separated by an optional section headline (School Info and Parent Info are headlines). The headline can also (optionally) be a link. Classic Tab Style Roll Over Background Tiled Image The background for all of your pages can be white, coloured or, can use a tiled or fixed placement background image.  Check out the Web Backgrounds section to see what your choices are.  As with the buttons, you will have the option of uploading and using your own choice for a background tiled image. Once you have conceptualized your Web Site, it is likely a good idea to sketch it out on paper so that you will have a reference in front of you as you begin the construction stage.