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Green Hectares Rural Tech Workshop - Adding Content
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- 2. • THESE MATERIALSARE COPYRIGHTED WITH ALL RIGHTS ARE RESERVED. THIS DOCUMENT MAY NOT IN WHOLE OR IN PART BE COPIED, PHOTOCOPIED, REPRODUCED, OR REDUCED TO ANY ELECTRONIC MEDIUM OR MACHINE-READABLE FORM WITHOUT PRIOR CONSENT, IN WRITING, FROM ZEPHYR SOFTWARE TRAINING LTD. AND GREEN HECTARES CORP. • ANY SOFTWARE, COMPUTER, AND PRODUCT NAMES MENTIONED ARE MANUFACTURER AND PUBLISHER TRADEMARKS AND ARE USED ONLY FOR THE PURPOSE OF IDENTIFICATION. • Microsoft, Explorer, Outlook, Windows , are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. • All other trademarks are property of their respective owners. www.greenhectaresonline.com info@greenhectaresonline.com
- 3. Set up Structure •Sign up and login to your website • Choose your website theme and structure • Colours – http://kuler.adobe.com – HEX Values • Remember only certain fonts will be displayed on a webpage
- 4. Navigating your Website •Review your sitemap • Create the pages that you have content for • Make sure all pages are in their proper locations Example: Second level navigation under primary navigation
- 5. Home Page • Importanceof the Introduction paragraph • Direct the user • Too much of a good thing
- 6. Reviewing Text Content •Review grammar and spelling • Spell check does not check for – There, their, they’re – To, two, too – Your, you’re
- 7. Copyright • Do notsteal intellectual property • Includes – Graphics / Photos – Music – Lyrics – Articles
- 8. Receiving Permission • Yourname • Your website • Usage – personal use, commercial use, research, review or education • Items copied – article URL or image name • How item will be used
- 9. Adding Content • Beginadding text content • Add links within text • Save the draft
- 10. Adding Images • Complimentingphotos • Important to keep user’s attention • Ensure photos are proper file size • Ideal file size (maximum) – Thumbnails – 10kb – 25kb – Full-size – 100kb – 150kb
- 11. Alt Attribute • SearchEngine crawlers • Concise description
- 12. Publishing Page • Publishinga Page – Do not publish empty or “coming soon” pages • Publishing a Blog post – Tag your blog posts – Use: When, where, what, why and how as tag guidelines
- 13. Contact Us • Shoulduse a contact form • List generic contact email • Location of business with map • Store hours • Phone number
- 14. Going Live! • Makingyour website open to all internet visitors • Create a small field test • Review feedback and make changes • Test sites
- 15. Keeping it fresh •After you have made all changes to your website, it is important to keep the content on your website fresh • Blogs are a great way to encourage repeat visitors
- 16. Newsletters • Newsletters arenon-intrusive • Offer deals or incentive to subscribe and stay subscribed • Do not bombard your users
- 17. Things to Consider •Does chosen colours for background contrast with font colour? • Can the demographic read your content with ease? • Do all pages have a consistent layout? • Contact information is clearly defined?
- 18. Things to Considercont... • Does the navigation stay in a consistent order? • Do all links work? • Are all headings labeled properly with keywords? • Does site validate at: – http://validator.w3.org/
Editor's Notes
- #2 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Welcome to Adding Content - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - The purpose of this workshop is intended to teach the student the basics of adding content to a website and publishing that content. *Instructor notes will be distinguished by italics. Make sure that the following are installed / updated: Internet Explorer Other requirements: Internet Connection (High Speed Preferred) *This course should be taught by a person with a graphics and web development background. *Familiarize yourself with some examples of free hosting website and design.
- #4 Signing up for a website depends on the website hosts you have chosen. Most free websites usually have themes that you can choose from. *Website should have been created previously but for this workshop students need to keep the original themes and structures due to the time restrictions. You can create custom colours by visiting www.kuler.adobe.com HEX values are the base 16 values for colours. Provide the six digit HEX value either to a graphic designer, or input the HEX values where colours are applicable. Two of the most common types faces are sans-serif fonts and serif fonts. Common fonts used are: Myriad Pro Condensed, Times New Roman and Arial Narrow. *Google some examples of free hosting websites – however students should have chosen a host by this workshop. Be prepared to quickly register students who haven’t chosen a host yet. www.weebly.com
- #5 Everyone will have slight differences in their website hosting and design, but essentially the components remain the same. Once you’ve signed into your website your host will allow to review the pages and contents and make the necessary changes you require. *Walk participants through setting up pages within their own website development. *Use the sticky note mock up from Website Planning workshop to map out the contents amongst the website pages.
- #6 Your introductory paragraph is the most important part of your website and it should contain keywords heavily throughout the text. Replace pronouns with company name. Example: Contact Us for your training needs. Replace with: Contact Green Hectares for your training needs. Think of your Home Page as a traffic officer. All traffic starts at the Home Page and is filtered into various sections of the website. It is crucial that your Home Page is clear and offers large icons that indicate what the most important portion of your website is. Example: www.zephyrtraining.ca have chosen to have Upcoming Events, Links and clear navigation to important sections of the website. Don’t overwhelm your user. Do not make every link on your website big and large. It is important to be strategic with your information. Rank the top 4 pages of your website and use this as a guideline on what to place on your Home Page.
- #7 Spelling and grammar is a very important part of your company’s image. It is extremely important to check spelling and grammar to ensure that you are conveying a professional image. Have another person proofread your material prior to publishing your website.
- #8 When you are compiling your content, do not use the above listed items directly from another website. If you find any of those listed items from another source, you will need the original creator’s permission to use the content. A citation to the original source will also be needed. If you do not receive permission to use content that you are using, you are susceptible to having legal action filed against you.
- #9 Send an email or letter to the creator requesting permission to use their property. Ensure to explain how you will be suing their property. The bulleted items above can be used as a guide in your request.
- #10 Add text content by typing out the content or copying and pasting the content from a text document. Every little bit counts towards search engine optimization. Example: By highlighting words such as “Zephyr Training Classroom’s” and linking the text within your content to pages throughout your website is a great way to improve search ranking for users. Many web editors or content management systems allow users to save periodically. Note that saving does not mean publishing. Once you have added the text content, be sure to save your page as a draft. Do NOT publish yet.
- #11 It is easy to have traffic hit a particular page, the difficult part is keeping users on the page. Since typically users scan pages as opposed to reading them, choose images that will compliment and help the user relate to the content on the page. It is important to have the correct file size for your photos. Do not take photos straight from your digital camera and insert these images into your website. Use a graphic editing application to adjust images to the appropriate size. Resizing images in a Internet browser window does not constitute a graphic editing application. You must use a stand-alone application for this step. Ideally for thumbnails, the images should not be larger than 25kb. Typically there will be quite a number of images to load, the smaller the images, the faster users will have access to your content. Full-size images should not be larger than 150kb. If your demographic does not have access to high speed internet 100kb should be your absolute maximum file size.
- #12 Search engine crawlers do not read images. Instead, crawlers read Alt attributes. Be clear when describing the image. Do not go into too much detail and be sure to include keywords in the Alt Attribute. Example: A photo of Zephyr Training’s classroom should have an Alt attribute of “Zephyr Training Classroom” instead of “Classroom”.
- #13 Once you have images inserted with Alt attributes and all grammatical and spelling errors have been addressed you can publish your page. Do not publish pages that do not have any content in them or pages that read “Coming soon”. Either you have the content or you don’t. Do not publish empty pages. It is important to tag your blog posts not only for search engine optimization but also help the search function within your website. Why tag blog posts? So people can find your content when they visit your blog. Maybe there is an entry that left a lasting impression with a user. The better the tags used, the easier it will be for users to find your content.
- #14 Contact forms improve the likelihood of users contacting you for your products or services. By eliminating the need to use a default mail program running such as Outlook or Apple Mail, a contact form allows users to fill in information and directly message your company. If you wish to list an email address be sure to add an email that is generic. The internet is filled with email crawlers that add emails listed on websites to spam lists. To avoid having spam infiltrate your email inbox, list a generic email address such as contact@domain.com or info@domain.com. Many users visit websites prior to visiting your business. Having a convenient location for users to find where your business is crucial to the success of your website. Be sure to include a map to your business. The last thing you want is to have are clients arriving at your business location to find your business closed. By posting store hours, you eliminate this issue. Last but not least post your phone number on your website. Different users prefer different forms of communication, offer your users a wide range of communication methods.
- #15 Create a small field test and send a link to your newly created site to a small group of people you trust. This group should include as broad of a range of people as possible. Do not send your website to people exclusively in your industry. People that have a background in your industry may not pick up on content that may not be as clear to the average user. Take the feedback you receive and make any necessary changes. Repeat process and ask field testers to review changes. When working with web developers, developers should have a test area for you to see what your website will look like and test functionality. When developing a website, seeing a website in progress is unprofessional, therefore using a test site will help iron out all the technical, or usability bugs.
- #16 Depending on the business, content should be updated regularly. Establish a schedule and stick to it. Announcing a particular day that new content will be added will encourage users to return to your website to see what new products or content is there. Establishing quick tips about your business or industry is a great way of establishing new content.
- #17 Newsletters are a great way of establishing a consistent following. Offer deals, sales or incentives to subscribe. You will not only receive new subscribers, but keep existing ones. Be careful not to bombard your subscribers with updates. Establish an update schedule and stick with it.
- #19 *Be certain to allow lots of workshop time to adding content, making changes and publishing it. *Be prepared with suggestions: Add Social media links. Add Google map. How many clicks to get a user to where they want to go. Preparing pages that don’t have to go live now – getting ready for the future.