Personal Pages (www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~username)

[What is the difference between a personal page and a project page?]

There are several ways to go about creating and publishing your personal web pages.

To get information on how to publish your personal web pages on the internet via the LDEO web server, please consult the Computer Support Group's "Publish Your Web Pages" site.

Page Design Steps

Here are a couple of templates to copy and modify:

template 1: home page, reg. page

template 2: home page, reg. page

Color

Colors do not translate universally from browser to browser. One can use more than the 256 "websafe colors" but they will render differently in different browsers.

A certain amount of people (especially men) are colorblind. The number one color challenge is red-green vision impairment. Other color combinations to be used sparingly (if not avoided completely) are green-blue and green-purple.

Font Size

There are several different ways to control font size. None is absolute.

Menu Placement

There is a reason why most menus are found on the left or along the top.

Home Page

The first page of any site is called the home page. It should be called either índex.html'or index.htm''. Both will work and it is just a matter of habit which uses. One should keep it consistent within one site, though, to make it easier for visitors to use and navigate the site.

Creating Your First Site

Here are the recommended steps:

1) collect all available content
2) create the first site map draft
3) decided which content will be implemented immediately and which will follow
4) revise the site map accordingly
5) first design draft ("look and feel") based on content available
6) create template and library items if the site will have more than three pages with the same layout
7) build the homepage
8) update first design ("look and feel")
9) build the menu
10) update templates with the the menu and the updated look and feel
11) create new pages from the template
12) link pages

Images

The screen resolution of the average computer monitor is 72 dpi, the newer version have a resolution of 92 dpi. It does not make sense to use images with a higher resolution, as they will take more space on the server, slow page download time (which can add up if the site is image content rich) and the viewer will not see a difference in image quality.