Saint Mary's College

The first and best thing to keep in mind when planning and creating a web page, is the ol' K.I.S.S. rule:

With a little thought, and pre-planning, building your own website can be fun and easy. Creating a site that is attractive as well as informative will be extremely satisying, and the first time you see the labors of your hard work out on the web--you'll be hooked!

First, YOU WILL NEED AN HTML EDITOR PROGRAM, (such as Dreamweaver) --one capable of creating html pages and is compatible with the Saint Mary's College web environment.

The college has standardized on Macromedia Dreamweaver as the best HTML editor for our community, and the use of approved templates and other resources requires the use of Dreamweaver. Other HTML editors can be used, but results are unpredictable and their use is not supported by the Saint Mary's College Information Technology department or web team.

If you are not familiar with the capabilities of Dreamweaver, the best way get acquainted, is to run through the online tutorial. You can use either the tutorial offered within the Dreamweaver application: found under Help > Using Dreamweaver, or an online Dreamweaver Quickstart Tutorial has been created by the Instructional Technology Resource Center (see the Webpage Creation link on the ITRC site).

We STRONGLY suggest that you run through one of these tutorials , in order to familiarize yourself with the proper terminology and features. We recommend that you proceed through the lessons in order, but at any time you can return to the index to jump to a different lesson.

If you still want more instruction about designing sites, check out these design resources:

Plain text editors, e.g. SimpleText for the Macintosh or NotePad for Windows can be used to modify web pages and fix minor HTML problems. We strongly urge that you learn to use the most basic text editor while you learn HTML and then later you can explore HTML "editors" You should also be familiar with switching between multiple applications as well as using the mouse to copy and paste selections of text.

Refer to the HTML code page as a reference. You can get to it by following the hypertext link at the top of every lesson page. If you are having trouble, see the Writing HTML FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) before writing us for help. We get lots and lots of e-mail. Too much. :-)

How this site is set up...

The pages in this site provide the details and resources for you to create official websites within the Saint Mary's domain.

The links on the left side of these pages will guide you through the basic design expectations for your site. We hope that you will refer this document as you maintain your website.

Included are step by step instructions on how to apply a custom graphic header to your pages, or if you would feel more comfortable requesting assistance, please submit the "Redesign Request Form".

This is an on-going resource--additional information and will added to this website in the future, so please bookmark the URL and check back often.