[Norman Pratt]

Hi, all. I am an early-retired comprehensive school History teacher. I want to write History materials for Key Stage 3 and 4. My area of interest is World History, so I am planning to set up a website in order to promote world history as a subject, and also my own writing.

To put it in a different way, I offered some of my materials to Andrew on his History website, and instead he offered to help me with my own. He has since very generously answered some very basic questions about setting up a website. For example, how do you set things up so people can download my materials?

The answer (to put the files on your website like any other, and make hyperlinks to them on your download page) is perhaps obvious to most of you. But then neither a web-search nor my reference materials revealed it. Without an school ICT technician to advise, problems like this can be overwhelming.

So, I would like to share with you how my website develops, and I may well, from time to time, ask for advice.

So now I get to the site itself, which is kind of subject-specific stuff. My initial aim is to further my desire to write History materials. My secondary aim has now become more important: it is to promote the teaching of World History at Key Stage 3. There is very little enthusiasm for teaching ‘civilizations other than our own’ (although they do get a good airing in Key Stage 2, when, that is, the children are not too busy learning Maths and English). ‘The Inca Empire of Peru’ has for years been a topic that hovered on the outskirts, as it were. (Heinemann produced a CD-Rom on it once, but that is about it.) By making free materials available on this topic I am hoping to help bring it into the mainstream and perhaps even promote a debate on the subject of ‘why don’t we teach any world history in Key Stage 3?’ So that’s the aim. Clearly Andrew has already given me some invaluable advice: I need my own website. I will let you know when I launch it (or very probably when I need some help launching it!)

At this moment I have got the site working on my own computer, I have my webspace reserved by my ISP, Madasafish, and I am reading up on what they, and my software Webplus 9, have to say about launching my website.

[DaveStacey]

Hi Norman,

Good luck with this project, and thanks for keeping a diary here, I'm sure it will make useful and interesting reading for many!

Dave

[Andrew Field]

Hi Norman - welcome to the forum. Thanks for your excellent first post!

Norman offered a wealth of history materials to me, so much so that it seemed much more appropriate that he setup and run his own website. I am delighted that you are following this suggestion and I'm sure many teachers will find your site useful when it is launched.

Plus, as you've already identified others will be interested in the journey too - the process in creating the site may end up being actually just as useful as the finished site too. Do not hesitate to post any further questions as there are many here who produce their own sites or have other online tools that they use.

[goneunderground]

Hello Norman! Your venture sounds really good and I look forward to passing on details of your site and materials to our history dept with whom I work occasionally. I teach a bit of webdesign in my ICT lessons and we use Webplus9 so I'll be following your progress with interest!

[Norman Pratt]

As one whose preferred learning method is usually to be shut away in a darkened room, I very much appreciate the interest shown!

I have used Serif software for a long time. I loaded my first version, PagePlus2, with what seemed like about 20 floppy disks! Although it cost me £100 it was still at the time about £500 cheaper than the Adobe software. In fact I think they must have helped bring other companies' prices down a bit. I now only buy Serif's £10 offers - when they come out!

I showed a disk version of my site to a couple I know who are ex-teachers. One excellent suggestion was to make each of the download pages I am offering self-standing (as well as being a two or three page narrative.) That was actually very easy to change. Both of them are excellent proof-readers, and pointed out the things I'd missed. I have now spent so much time designing the website that I don't 'want' to see mistakes! Also they couldn't cope with the minimalist plain 'arrow up' on two of the pages, so I am adding the words 'back to the top'!

Ken was highly sceptical of the information on one of my maps showing much of northern South America in the 16th Century inhabited by farmers. But that is just what it shows on my Dorling-Kindersley World History Atlas, and other sources. This 'GeeWhiz did they really?' response is just what I'm after, and one of the reasons why I like the Incas.

Then I showed the latest version of the website to my wife. She produces highly intricate teaching sheets about beadworking and other crafts, on PagePlus9, and is a good critic. As a result I shall remove the llama graphic from all the website pages, leaving them just on the downloads. It was confusing to have them on both, especially as I was using the llama as a Home button; tidy up the llama graphic: I had not noticed that the llama on the downloads had very obviously lost the end of one of his ears by being overlaid by another graphic; re-write and rearrange the explanations on the download page and make sure I understand why some of the entries on the lists of websites turn purple when they're used, and some do not.

I seem to be going backwards at this stage. But then all I have to do is remember what I knew about websites a couple of months ago... Once I have sorted the above design problems out I will get back to my reading on the subject of up-loading.

[Norman Pratt]

After consulting my daughter I decided to make the Homepage more compact so that everything can be seen without having to scroll down.

I added a sentence for anyone viewing the website who had an interest in Incas but not in education; removed a number of navigation and ‘feedback’ buttons, because it seemed to be a bit crowded; and then thoroughly tested all the internal and external links, including the website links, which are many.

An important feature of the site are 14 pdf files for downloading. When I altered these, I should have overwritten the old versions. The old versions kept turning up when I tested out the website, for reasons I couldn’t quite fathom out, and when I’d finally eliminated all the older versions, I couldn’t call up the replacement versions on my Downloads page. I would probably save myself a lot of time if I thought things out logically and didn’t hang on to so many old versions of everything!

All this required a lot of toing and froing between the editing mode and viewing mode of Webplus9. However, having at last got the website layout as I wanted it, I discovered another useful preview feature I hadn’t noticed called ‘Layout’ checker. This immediately rejected my main headings font, ‘Arial Black’, because it was not one of the fonts that could be viewed as fonts on the Web. Having then gone through all the possible replacements – Arial, Comic Sans MS, Courier New (as an ex typist I can never understand why that font is still used), Georgia, Tahoma, Times New Roman, Trebuchet MS, and Verdana. Of those only Tahoma had anything like the chunky feel I felt was necessary to do justice to the Incas, who happily moved 40 ton boulders around. So I opted to ‘export’ my ‘Arial Black’ headings as graphics. I assume this will slow things down a bit, so I have saved an ‘Arial bold’ version of my site in case it’s needed. Actually, the ‘Layout’ checker didn’t like my Times bodytext either, so I may need to come back to this.

The instructions for uploading my site in Webplus9 and from my service provider madasafish seemed straightforward, so I attempted to do it. I received the following message in return:
“200 Type set to 1
227 Entering Passive Mode (90,189,92,38,230,84)
550 civil PDF; Permission denied”

‘civil’ is the name of the first of my 14 pdf files. So I take it my service provider doesn’t like them for some reason. However, my complete ignorance as to what I’m doing makes speculation pointless.

I’ve sent an e-mail to madasafish requesting help.

[goneunderground]

Have you managed to upload any part of the site? If not, have you checked every single detail for the ftp -ing is correct, especially the password? I know it sounds obvious but sometimes the most obvious things can be overlooked. I spent forever trying to upload a site once, only to realise that I'd intiially and unintentionally entered my password as upper case (which I never normally do) so I was repeatedly entering it lower case, failing to upload and tearing my hair out. Have you specified where the site is going to be uploaded to?

[Norman Pratt]

Thanks. I'll give that a try! Madasafish have suggested I have a filename with a gap in it, but I can't see one. Norman.

[Andrew Field]

Do let us know how you get on. The error you have actually encountered means that you don't have the correct permission to upload the file that that location. [I found this by typing ftp and 550 into Google - getting this: http://support.ipswi...000817-DM02.htm ]

There is absolutely nothing wrong with uploading pdf files, they are files like any other.

The issue with spaces in filenames can be important, but it shouldn't really be. Some servers dislike spaces and this causes hyperlinks not to work, rather than preventing files from being uploaded.

One other thing to consider is the size of the .pdfs. You aren't uploading an immense file that is over 10MB large or anything? There may be a limit on filesize that prevents you uploading immense documents. Even today with broadband it is wise to keep files under 2MB just so those without broadband connections can still make use of the site without waiting hours for files to download.

[Norman Pratt]

Two e-mails from Madasafish Technical Support eventually sorted it out. They suggested there might be a file name with gaps, but as I had made very simple filenames I knew it wasn’t that. This morning I had another message setting out the wording for uploading from Webplus9. I’d left the box ‘Folder’ empty, and it had to have ‘public_html’ typed in it. It then loaded as advertised. Wheee!

So the website is now up and running at incaempire.org.uk. It looks more or less as I intended (with one stray graphic which I will need to attend to!) It seems to load rather slowly. Is that my chunky Arial Black headings or the masses of text I wonder?

I left space for links, I am on the lookout to add to the Inca sites I have included already, and I would like to be a bit higher among the 2 million websites that refer to Incas. But what else should I be doing next?

[Andrew Field]

Excellent! I can get onto the site at http://www.incaempire.org.uk/

The reason it loads slowly is simply down to the design that you've used. At the moment everything is one large image. This means the page won't display correctly until the large image has been downloaded to the individual's computer.

What would be far better - and it would load much more quickly - is to separate the text from the graphic. If you look on the BBC homepage at http://www.bbc.co.uk/ you'll see how the text loads really quickly and then the graphics load separately. As you've got everything as one large graphic it basically all has to wait until the graphic loads.

Another important issue is accessibility. Users with screen readers, or those who wish to enlarge the text won't be able to use your site. This is because the text cannot be selected. Your text is part of the graphic.

I'm not trying to put your excellent work down, as there are many sites on the internet that use a similar technique but it would be much better to start with just the text on each page. Don't convert the text to graphics, but instead have the text as original text. I'm afraid I haven't used the program that you are using, but I think others on this forum have so they'll be able to offer more specific advice

You certainly can include background graphics but there are more efficient ways of doing so. Keeping the text separate from the graphics would be a much more preferable solution.

[goneunderground]

I've had a look too, and I can see it's going to be a really useful rescource - superb, in fact! I use serifwebplus 9 at school and will try and get back later with some suggestions of my own (off to empty a house into a skip now, I'm afraid!)

[Norman Pratt]

Thanks for your useful and encouraging comments. And I certainly don't regard constructive criticism as a put-down, but rather a put-up, if there is such a phrase! Norman.

[Norman Pratt]

Today I have removed the large background Machu Picchu picture that appeared on every page, and replaced it with a smaller one on all the main pages. I've also had a go at trying to make the text more web-friendly, but the checking tool keeps informing me it won't accept my text (as text) because it's cropped, or in the case of my Arial Black headings because it has artistic features. The Webplus9 checking tool is useful in alerting me to lost hyperlinks that inadvertently happened when I tried editing the text to sort out this problem. I need to read the documentation about text, but hopefully the changes I've done today will speed up the site up a little.

[goneunderground]

Hello Norman - just a couple of thougts - I saw your revised home page but the photo isn't immediately visible unless you scroll down to find it: why not put it in the middle of the page and have the headings going round it? It would add colour to an otherwise plain page. Just a thought! Also, I am confused as to why you've put the Arial Black as graphics - why can you not just use text boxes and hyperlink from them? Arial Black is supposed to be a websafe font . It does load quicker now, certainly, but making the headings as graphics shouldn't really be necessary. I went onto my copy of serif webplus 9, typed in some Arial Black text and did the layout checker and it was fine....?

[Norman Pratt]

Thanks for both your suggestions, which I shall do first thing tomorrow. I'm the one who's confused. Looking at the computer screen this morning I couldn't figure out why my text was being described as 'graphics' all the time. For some reason the thought of text boxes didn't occur to me until I was looking at an Essex field later in the day. Doh!

[Andrew Field]

Norman, this is quite a common issue when people start first designing websites. It is so much better to keep text as text, rather than allow the program to convert it to a graphic. When text becomes a graphic it is much, much less accessible and isn't good practice.

If you can use textboxes to position real text it would make an immense improvement to your site. You could then keep your actual images as correct graphics, but these would load separately from the most important element - the text.

Do keep us updated!

[Norman Pratt]

Having shrunk in size and migrated to the bottom of my Homepage, my picture of Machu Picchu is back, smaller and wiser, in the middle, surrounded by the links to the other pages of the site. I have also converted most of the ‘graphic’ text to ‘text’ text. The Layout Checker in Webplus9 insists my Arial Black headings are not a website-friendly typeface, but I trust that despite this the site now loads reasonably quickly and is visible to most viewers. I hadn't realised that making changes to the site was so easy, and quick.

I was very grateful for the feedback on this Forum on how the site was looking and functioning. Getting a variety of browsers on my machine is one of many jobs for my website ‘to do’ list. Firefox lasted a couple of days, until I saw a rumour, probably totally unjustified, that it had an adverse affect on the Flight Simulator I run - so I removed it (Firefox that is) very quickly!

I’m going to make one more change to my Homepage - introduce 5 icons to provide a visual clue to what the 5 main pages of the site are about.

Thanks to the technical help from members of this Forum, I can now concentrate more on the ‘strategy’!

[goneunderground]

Looking much better already! Just a very minor point and not urgent, but you might like to change the names of the pages to something meaningful (to a search engine) rather than page 1 page 2 etc which is serifweb's default naming. You just need to right click on a page, go to page properties and change the filename to, for example, incadownloads or incawebsites or whatever

[Norman Pratt]

After overcoming my initial confusion over Webplus9's three terms for page names, I have changed them from the default numbers as suggested. I have added some pictures to brighten up the Homepage, and hopefully give a visual clue as to what's in the rest of the site. Larger versions of these pictures appear on the pages they link to. I've also made one or two changes in the text, including references to the History Key Stage 3 consultative document just published by QCA.