Have you made the decision to take your newspaper online but don't know where to start?
You need two things when creating a web site: a domain name and a host site. The domain name is your web site's address, consisting of a name followed by .com, .org, .net or a number of other extensions (www.poynter.org is a domain name). The web host houses the physical location of the website. Often, you can get both at the same place.
The Grizzly Gazette (Granite Hills High School, Porterville, Calif.), the 2007 Pacemaker award winner that we focused in on a previous item about the benefits of going virtual, is hosted on Network Solutions, one of many registrar sites where you can buy a domain name and/or web hosting. At Network Solutions, the domain name is free with the purchase of a web hosting package, which starts at $9.96 a month.
Once you've decided on a domain name and hosting site, it's time to design. You can do this one of two ways. The web hosting sites often offer design packages for an extra fee. These give you templates to customize and require little knowledge of
HTML.
The Grizzly Gazette is student-designed, and the staff is self-taught. Lauren Rabaino, editor-in-chief last spring, says she designed the site in
Adobe Dreamweaver, a program that allows you to design files on your computer and transfer them to the web site (through a process called FTP, file transfer protocol).
Graphics can be created in programs like
Photoshop and transferred to the website.
W3 Schools offers free web-building tutorials.
Webmonkey is another resource, and Dreamweaver tutorials, which come with the program, are helpful.
NVU.com is a low-cost alternative to Dreamweaver, but future employers will be more impressed by proficiency in the latter.
So, start exploring the possibilities online and
tell us what you discover.
