Web
designing is no more the task of an individual. It is a group
effort. It is an undertaking in which a group of people
collaborate to make it happen.
A Collaborative Authoring
Environment
It is a blend of
 | Technical tools: Provided by
Front Page 2000. |
| Workflow process: It is the
job of a Project Manager. A single individual in charge of
designing a workflow process. |
Technology
Front Page 2000 provides several
tools that help create a collaborative atmosphere.
Front
Page Server Extensions:
| Front Page server extensions
are a series of programs and executables that enable
collaboration between Front Page and web servers. |
| Front Page extensions are
available for all kinds of servers available today.
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Office
Server Extensions
| Front Page 2000 is an official
part of Microsoft Office Suite now. |
| Office server extensions
provide added functionality of Web Discussions, Web
Subscriptions, Web-based administration. |
| Office Server extensions can
only be installed on server running Microsoft Internet
Information Server running on NT4 or later. |
| Web Discussions:
allow participation on specific Office documents. Comments can
be made directly to the document. |
| Web Subscriptions:
This feature sends an e-mail to the members of a team whenever
a specific document is changed. Each person responsible for
designing a web site can subscribe to it and get updated
automatically if something changes in an important document. |
| Web-based Administration:
Is a means of web site administration through a web browser.
Enables you to configure web discussions, web subscriptions
and databases. Single point administration.
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Working Without Server Extensions:
As you know, you can create a
disk-based web can be created and put in a shared directory on
the network and a lot of people can work on it.
Tasks Tracking:
The Tasks View of Front Page 2000
allows you to
| Assign Tasks to designers. |
| Track and monitor progress. |
| You can see project status and
time spent. |
Users can directly open a task by
double clicking it and edit it.
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Establishing Workflow:
A web site, especially a large
one, is designed by a group of people. With a group working
together, it becomes important to establish a set of rules and
work flow. It is a three step process:
| Developing a site goal. |
| Designing a Project flow. |
| Assigning duties to the
members of the team. |
Site Goal:
| A very clear site goal must be
developed and communicated to all team members. |
| The purpose of the site must
be understood even before the first page is designed. |
| An effective site goal would
consider:
|
- Users and platform base: Take
into accounts several platforms the users might be using.
What to do for the users with handicaps? How about technical
support? How about download instructions?
- Design requirements: Will the
site use themes or templates? Color scheme? Content- who
will write? Who will design graphics?
- Team assignments and
responsibilities: Communication is the key. Everyone must
understand his responsibility and deadlines.
- Growth and maintenance.
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Designing Workflow:
Workflow is the order in which
the projects are completed, reported and verified. The elements
that go into designing workflow are:
| Content development: Find
skillful writers in the team. Not everyone is a good writer. |
| Structure development: How far
away do you want to keep your content from your users. Not
too many clicks away. Also determine how easy you are going
to make the finding of a document on your site. |
| Establishing the look and feel
of the site: In the interest of consistency, the site must
have a similar design. It must be determined before
starting. |
| Publication: It must be
established how often the site is going to be published and
who will be responsible for doing it. A publishing schedule
must be established. |
| Alpha testing: External users
are brought in during this phase to test the site's flow and
look and feel. A restructuring is normally needed after this
phase. |
| Beta testing: In this phase,
users are brought in to test the site before it becomes open
to the public to find bugs and other problems. |
| Maintenance: It is more
crucial and time consuming than development. Establishing
responsibilities and schedule for maintenance is essential. |
It must be communicated clearly
to the project team.
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Assignment of Duties:
After the establishment of site
goals and workflow, the duties must be assigned to the team.
Front Page has a Tasks View which can do that.
| Choose File, New. |
| Choose task to assign a Task. |
| Enter Task name. |
| Assign it to a team member. |
| Assign a priority to the task. |
| Write a description. |
If you are assigning a task to a
document, the document must be selected.
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The Development
Environment:
Most organizations have a
Development server which is a replica of the live server on
which the site is hosted eventually. The development server is
normally called Test Server and the live one is called
Production server. Development server acts as back up in case of
emergencies like the Production server crashing.
Disk-Based Webs:
This is a means of developing a
web without a web server. It is limited in its functionality. By
default Front Page 2000 assumes that all webs are disk-based
webs. If you want to create a server-based web, you must specify
the URL of the web in Specify the Location
drop-down box on New Web window.
Server-based Webs:
It is ideal that a web is created
on a server. If the web is to use Front Page extensions and
Office extensions, they must be installed on the server. You can
also install Microsoft Personal Web Server on your machine and
work with it for developmental purposes.
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Publishing Issues:
By default Front Page 2000 marks
all pages in a web for publishing. However, you may mark pages
that you do not want to publish to prevent unfinished work going
live. To do that:
| Right click a web document in
Folder List. |
| Choose Properties from the
shortcut menu. |
| Click Workgroup tab. |
| Check " Exclude
this file when publishing the rest of the web" .
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Checking Documents In
and Out:
This is a very interesting
feature for a multi-author web site. This allows designers to
check out a document, and Front Page 2000 will then not allow
any one else to check out the same document for editing until it
is checked in. It prevents multiple-edits. To enable this
feature:
| Select Tools, Web Settings. |
| From the General tab, check
"Use document check in and check
out" . |
After this feature is enabled,
every time a document is opened the user/designer will be
prompted if he/she wants to check out the document. Choosing
"No" will only give you a
read-only access and "Yes"
you will get edit access.
Permissions:
Permissions are very important in
a multi-user designing environment. Everyone should not be given
the same level of access. There are three types of permissions:
| Browse. |
| Browse and Author. |
| Browse, Author and Administer. |
Depending on what kind of access
you have on the server, you may be able to grant permissions to
Users, Groups and computers.
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Publishing the Site:
It is a simple task. However, it
is important that in a multi-author designing environment ,
somebody must be made responsible for doing it at a scheduled
time.
