Fuller's primary philosophy of web management is decentralization. The goal is that each division or major area in the seminary take responsibility for its own site. Thus, areas can maintain information quickly and easily without a central bottleneck. And it also allows each area to develop their pages to reflect their unique offerings while being governed by set graphic standards for the entire Fuller website.

In CLL level, we decentralize even further. Each office should be set up with the ability to author and maintain pages at their location: Cont. Ed, D.Min. all five extension campuses, and DL. Thus, each office is able to maintain course schedules, announcements, newsletters, and so on.

If you would like to point students and guests directly to your website homepage, you may use the URL that is found in the address window of your browser when you are viewing your home page. For example, FNC could say, "Visit our website at http://www.fuller.edu/cll/extension/html/northerncal.html." It is recommended that you include the site address (URL) as standard information on various printed pieces that go out from your office.

• Approvals — All material submitted for web publishing must be approved by the department director.
• Proofreading — Do it! Proofread thoroughly. Standard practice is that all pieces to be published should be proofread by two people. Always proofread from a hard copy. Double check phone numbers, addresses, and other items that the grammar check won’t catch: tuition prices, course numbers, spelling of proper names, etc.
• Styles — The standard style guides for FTS are The Chicago Manual of Style, Merriam Webster’s Dictionary (Note, the operative word is "Merriam"), and the FTS Style Guide.
• Content responsibility — The office originating the web page is responsible for the editorial content. The CLL web developer may read over some of the text, and may offer suggestions if he notices anything editorially that could be strengthened. However, does not function in a proofreading or editing role.
• Updates — Each office is responsible to review their web pages on a regular basis and make necessary updates. As a rule of thumb, whenever you update or create a printed piece, check to see if that information is also on the web and make the changes as needed.

The following is a basic outline of instructions for creating lower-level web pages for the CLL site.

• Creating a page — Create and maintain the document in Microsoft Word 98 (in Office 98 for Mac). (NOTE: DO NOT use MS Word 2001; it is incompatible with our web publishing process.) All changes and formatting should be done completely in Word before saving into HTML. If additional changes are to be made, always go back and make the modifications in Word. Thus the Word document always remains the source file for the page. No edits should be made in the HTML version.

• Naming a page — The name of the document will become the name of the web page. Names should be short and clear, with no spaces between words. You can use caps to set off words. Example: WebHelp. Or you can use the underline character between words: web_help. Generally we prefer to have names in all lower case.
• Saving as HTML — After a page is created in word, save it, then go to "File" > "Save as HTML." At the end of the file name, add a period plus html. Example: webhelp.html.
• Viewing the page — go to "File" > "Web Page Preview...". This allows you to view the page as it will look on the web. If you need to make any changes, go back to the Word document, make the changes, save, save it in HTML, and view it again.

Web publishing is uniquely different than print publishing. In print, the designer has virtually complete control of how the piece looks in its final form. In web publishing, the end user has more say in how the piece looks. Factors which affect how a web page is seen by the user include platform (PC or Mac), browser (Netscape, Microsoft, etc.), and the personal preferences of the user. Also, the web, by nature of the technology and medium, is generally much more restrictive in design elements.

In order to ensure the widest possible usability of the site, please follow these basic design and format guidelines:

To create a hyperlink in Word 98:
1) Highlight the exact word or phase in the text which would be used to click on to go the link.
2) Go to "Insert" > "Hyperlink" [note: learn to use apple + k as the short cut].
3) In the Insert Hyperlink dialog box, fill in the link address (URL=uniform resource locator).

There are two ways to link to a page: The absolute address and the relative path:

The absolute address is a URL that is completely spelled out: http://www.fuller.edu/cll/fnc/ecds. You would use an absolute URL to link to pages that are outside the Fuller domain. For example: http://www.altavista.com/.

The relative path address is just the last portion of the address that guides the browser to look for the file within the same domain. For example: /cll/fnc/ecds/014/OT501_Petrotta014.html.

If you are linking to another page within CLL, follow the same procedure: cll/html/ce.html. The name "index.html" takes your browser to a home page within a folder.

Links to a location on the same page (such as the links in the index on the top of this page) — First place an "anchor" (Word calls it a bookmark) by putting your cursor at the spot where you are linking to, go up to Insert > Bookmark, and type in the name, no spaces (such as"HyperlinkSytle"). This puts an anchor in the HTML giving a location to link to (it won't work just to link to text on the page). Then in creating the link in the Insert Hyperlink box, go to "Named location in file" and use the "Select…" button to choose the anchor you want.

Mailto links — To set up a link that will send an email message, go to the Insert Hyperlink dialog box (Apple + K). Enter the words: "mailto:" plus the email address (no space in between). Example: mailto:dsimpson@fuller.edu.

Using color on the Internet is a challenge because color is rendered differently depending on the browser, platform, and computer. A web publisher never knows for sure what the color will look like to the user. A nice red on your computer may be a bright orange on someone else’s. As a general rule, PCs tend to render colors and photos darker than Macs.

When you view a web page, the title for that page appears in the bar on the top of the browser window (on a PC, it appears in the top right corner). This title also appears as the label when the page is bookmarked (Favorites in Explorer). Note that this title is NOT the name of the document. You have to be deliberate in assigning a title. So while the name of the file might be "northerncal.html" a good title would be "Fuller Northern California." (It can be frustrating to have a bookmark labeled "Home," "Welcome," "Untitled" or some other useless term.)

Page Titles in Microsoft Word:
When you create web pages in Word 98, Word will automatically use the first word in the document as the title (not the document name). Here’s how to retitle it:
• Go to File > Properties... > Summary (tab).
• Type your title into the Title field.

Page Titles in NetObjects Fusion:
You can retitle a page in NetObjects Fusion in two ways:
1. In the page layout mode: Edit > Custom Names... > Page Title. Type in the title of the page.
2. In the site mode: Properties pallet > page > Custom Names... > Page title.

Carefully proof your web page in a browser. A Microsoft-Word-created document may look great in Microsoft Internet Explorer, but often will have formatting problems when viewed in Netscape, particularly with bold type. Therefore, proof your pages with I.E. and Netscape. If you find items needing to be fixed, always go back and make the changes in the Word document, than save again as HTML. Make sure you test your hyperlinks. Absolute URLs should work. Relative URLs will work if they are in the same directory system on your computer. "Mailto" links should work. Links to content on the same page should work. Relative URLs to pages not in your directory need to be tested by the web developer on the preview server. Our web statistics show that 90% of our visitors use I.E. and only 10% use Netscape. Thus, if you can't get a page to work right in Netscape, it's not a critical priority.

After you have tried a solution to get rid of unwanted bolding, always preview it in Netscape to see if the problem has been fixed. If you can’t seem to fix the problem, it’s better to have no bolding or less bolding than to have it all bolded.

The organization of pages within a website is important because it relates to where all the components are stored and how they all linked to one another. In building a section of a website in Word, set up the folders (directories on a PC) in exactly the same structure as they will appear on the website. For example, with Fuller Northern California ECDs, all of the Fall 2001 ECDs are in a folder called 014, which is in a folder called ecds, which is in a folder called fnc, which is placed into the main cll directory. The web address to a FNC ECD looks like this: http://www.fuller.edu/cll/fnc/ecds/014/OT501_Petrotta014.html. So on the computer of the FNC web coordinator, the files should be stored in two parallel systems, one for the Word source documents, and one for the HTML. (Using different colored folders helps. I use red for all folders containing the Word documents, and green for the folder containing HTML pages. The green folders are what I post on the web.) Store the two parallel systems in two storage folders, for example, "FNC shell - Word" and "FNC shell - html."

When you are creating hyperlinks from various pages within that shell to other pages within that shell, you can use the relative path feature, and Word will automatically code the correct path for the link. Be careful not to casually rename folders; the folder names are part for the web page address (URL), thus when you change a name anywhere in that path, all of the hyperlinks pointing to that page will have to be changed. Therefore select good path names when you create the shell, and then stick with them. Work closely with the CLL web developer when you need to set up or revise a directory structure.

Use the file name "index.html" for the page in that folder which you want to come up first. Think of the index as a home page for that folder. The name index does not need to be included in setting up a hyperlink. The browser will automatically look for a page called "index.html" when it arrives to a folder. Thus, if you go to http://www.fuller.edu/cll/fnc/ecds, your browser will pull up the page http://www.fuller.edu/cee/fnc/ecds/index.html. Caution: Use care in transferring index files around. If you mistakenly put an index file into the wrong folder, it will replace the index file that is already there. Therefore, it's a good practice when sending an index file to put the name of the directory in parentheses: index (ECD). The parenthetical note is replaced with .html when saving the Word document as an HTML page: index.html.

Preview - When files are posted to the Fuller web server, they go onto the Fuller preview server first (http://preview.fuller.edu/cll/index.html). You need to be on the Fuller "FISH" network to view the pages on this server (the preview server cannot be accessed by the general public). Files are moved from the preview server to the main public Fuller sever at 7:00 a.m. each day (by an automated process prompted by a "moveme" file placed in the directory by the CLL web developer when there are files to be moved). Thus, the soonest an update page will appear live on Fuller's public web server is 7:00 a.m. the next day. For new pages or for pages with extensive content changes, the Fuller Web Committee (Webcom) requires a review period of one day on the preview server before the pages can be moved to the main server.

For the transferring website components with lots of pages and folders, it is best to transfer them as a single unit using compression and expansion programs. The software we are using is DropStuff and StuffIt Expander. Here’s how to get them:

When the installation of both DropStuff and Expander are complete, you can put the StuffIt folders wherever you want on your computer (I put mine under Applications). Use the aliases on your desktop (I keep mine in a folder and than pull them out when I need them).

To send files for posting, simply drag the folder to the StuffIt alias. It will copy the file, compressing it with all its sub-files and pages into one single encoded file (StuffIt archive). Attach this file to an email message and send it off. When the CLL web developer sends a StuffIt file to you, simply drag it to your StuffIt Expander alias icon. The file will then be expanded back to normal.

If you have individual files, such as two or three updated ECDs, KeyDates, etc., you can simply send those as individual attachments. If you are sending an index file, be careful to note exactly what folder it goes into. Also be careful in transferring index files around. If you mistakenly put an index file into the wrong folder, it will replace (DELETE!) the index that is already there.

If you see anything on the CLL site that needs to be changed or corrected, you can give the CLL web developer the feedback via fax or email. Fax is preferable because the changes are more quickly SEEN on the page. Email is best for electronically sending new text to be included. If you find anything on the rest of the Fuller site that needs fixing, you may pass it on to the CLL web developer and he'll pass it on to the right office.

By Fax:
- Print out a copy of the page to be corrected.
- Mark the corrections clearly, using black ink. Standard proofreader marks are nice, but not mandatory. Just make it clear. If there is not sufficient room between the lines to clearly write the corrections, use the margins, with a caret showing the insertion point.
- On your fax coversheet, please include my name, your name, phone number, and email address.
- Fax to Dan Simpson at 626-584-5313
- I will endeavor to acknowledge receiving your changes and let you know when the changes are made.

By Email:
- Be as clear as possible to describe where and what to change. Be sure to label the subject with something that describes what you are sending: Example: "FNC — website corrections."
Also, when you give changes, be precise and exact. If the material is given to the CLL web developer in such a way that he doesn't have to interpret what you mean, the chance of errors is greatly reduced. And of course, it is standard email etiquette to always include your phone number in your email signature.

Always feel free to call the CLL web developer if you have any questions or need to talk through anything. Often a short phone call can be much more efficient than a lengthy email.

This page was last updated September 12, 2001.