Producing material for the WWW
This page is primarily about producing material for the World Wide Web. Other pages deal with Advanced WWW production, Web servers at CUED
WWW Page Production
Your choices are to use your current word processing package, use a specialised HTML editor or write Raw HTML. Converting old documents might require extra programs. WWW Graphics production shouldn't pose a problem.
Guides and Tutorials
- General Introductions
- HTML Dog (guides and references)
- W3 schools (tutorials on many themes)
- Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing
- NetSkills supply various courses to the UK Higher Education community
- WWW Authoring by Example
- Useful Resources for WWW Authors
- Web Authoring Resource Centre (Fred Riley)
- The Computing Service Courses in HTML cover many issues
- Style Guides and Templates
- HTML
(HyperText Markup Language) has gone through various releases: the
current version is
HTML 4.0.
Browsers
don't all understand the same HTML features, but if you use simple HTML
commands you shouldn't have any problems.
- Getting started with HTML (by Dave Raggett - a 10-minute guide)
- Learn to Program HTML in 21 Minutes (Philip Greenspun)
- The Web Developer's Virtual Library intro to HTML
- A list of special characters
Validation
Remember to check the resulting files. Look at it with various browsers (IE, mozilla/netscape and a text-only browser like lynx). You'll need to proofread your documents online - don't depend solely on print-outs!
You can also run automated checkers
- Windows-based authors can use Xenu for link-checking
- Checkbot is a free, open source link-checker
- webpage link checker.
- W3C offer various tools on their QA tools page. Their unified validator Unicorn is perhaps the most useful.
Note also that the Disability Discrimination Act, which came into force on 1 October 1999, has made it a legal requirement that information (including that publicly available on the Web) should be accessible to disabled people. A page of information is available online from Cambridge Universiry. The APU's Web Accessibility Guidelines are useful too.
Utilities on the CUED Teaching System
xfig produce gif files. gimp produces animated gif files.
Getting your files onto the WWW
- Where to put the files -
The Engineering Department run various servers. Our main central ones are
- www.eng.cam.ac.uk - departmental and administrative pages. Also staff's official "home" pages.
- www-h.eng.cam.ac.uk - help on computing
- www-g.eng.cam.ac.uk - research group pages
- www2.eng.cam.ac.uk - users' files.
- What to write -
If you are authoring official information for the CUED Web site you should
consider
- what are you trying to get across and to whom?
- are you duplicating information that already exists elsewhere on the Web (in or outside Cambridge) and could be linked to?
- is this information sufficiently sensitive that it should either be restricted to University network users or CUED's internal network?
- how often will the information need updating and do you have time to do this? It will by your responsibility to maintain the currency and accuracy of the information on your pages.
- will you need to create on-screen forms for users to complete, or display information from databases?
- where will the pages be served from.
- will the pages conform to the Department's rules.
- How to create pages -
- WWW space for University Societies and Clubs
- Notes for research groups
- Updating official profile pages (staff)
- Creating unofficial web pages (all users)
Controlling, monitoring and increasing access
- How to control access to pages -
There are various ways to control access to pages
- PIN protection (CUED only)
- Raven protection (CUED only)
- password protection
- domain-based protection. Files can be made available only to
certain domains (like eng.cam.ac.uk).
To control access to a directory of pages so that only CUED people
have access, create a file called .htaccess in the directory,
make it readable by everyone, and put the following into it
order deny,allow deny from all allow from .eng.cam.ac.uk
You can have a list of "allow" lines.
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow,noarchive">
in the HEAD of your document hints to search engines that you don't want the file indexed.If you're dealing with sensitive information you might benefit from having your files put in the www Unix group. This offers further security options. Mail webadmin for details.
- Monitoring and increasing access -
- If for advertising purposes you want a short URL for your page (e.g. "http://www.eng.cam.ac.uk/go/nanoconf05"), mail webadmin@eng.cam.ac.uk
- There are monthly unofficial CUED WWW logs - but also see Why web usage statistics are (worse than) meaningless
- Statcounter is a web tracker
- Google Analytics is popular
- To advertise your pages, see
- Search Engine Watch - to see how to tempt the Search Engines - in particular see the meta tags section.
- Register-It - to register your page with some search engines.
<meta name="keywords" content="literature,literary,poetry,poets,prose,writers,theory">
to the HEAD of your document helps some search engines to index your file.
See the Advanced WWW production page for more details (on counters, etc).
Security, Guidelines and the Law
- To help reduce the risk of e-mail addresses being picked up by spammers, read about E-mail addresses on web pages
- CUED WWW House Style
- Worldwide Web - Departmental Guidelines
- Data Protection Act - Advice for UCS Users
- IT Syndicate Guidelines for WWW Providers
- University of Cambridge Web Accessibility Policy
- Some notes on digital resources and the law
Publications and Organisations
Contacts and Further Information
- People - webadmin oversees the Teaching System's World Wide Web material.