English 573: Web Site

For your final Web site project, you will create a site that demonstrates the practices and principles we've read about and discussed this semester. Ideally, you will create a site for an organization, business, cause, etc. needing a site. You do, however, have other options. For example, you may find an existing Web site that needs significant repair in its structure, design, and writing, and choose to overhaul that site. (In this scenario, you may choose whether you want to offer the revision to the other party.) I'm also willing to entertain additional ideas for the project.

Requirements

For undergradutate students, your site should include a home page and at least seven subordinate pages. For graduate students, your site should include a home page and at least nine subordinate pages. In addition, the pages and site you produce for this project must

• Be written for a particular audience and with a particular purpose.
• Be accessible, which includes offering appropriate navigation to other pages in your site.
• Include only necessary features, keeping the download time reasonable for people using low-bandwidth connections.
• Include meaningful, comprehensive content. While I'm not assigning a length for each Web page, and while pages shouldn't be unnecessarily long, your content must be fully developed.
• Show your ability to organize, chunk, edit, and write text suitable for an online environment. That is, you should use your writing skills to contribute significantly to the site content.
• Incorporate both screen and print style sheets. The screen style sheet should contain all the presentation and layout for the pages in the site. You're wecome to view style sites for ideas and inspiration, but you may not use templates for your site design.
• Have an attractive design that is easy to scan, follows suitable practices, and uses colors that contrast well. The design must also be free of distracting items, such as animated .gif files.
• Appear reasonably similar in both Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 3.
• Result in a professional, portfolio-worthy product.
• Adhere to the XHTML 1.0 Strict DTD to provide structure, and use CSS to control presentation. All Web pages and CSS files must validate using the official W3C validators.

If you revise an existing site, clear the idea with me first. Then, when submitting the site, provide me with a copy of (or a link to) the original materials, and tell me what you did to revise signficantly the writing and design.

Analysis

As with the previous Web site, graduate students will complete an analysis of their site. The analysis should

• Address the choices you made as you created the site.
• Identify how the audience and purpose played a role in your decisions.
• Assess the strengths and limitations of your site.
• Mention any obstacles you encountered and tell how you overcame them.
• Appear in memo format saved as a .doc or .docx file.