Wallace Hall Academy

Thornhill
Dumfriesshire
DG3 5DS

01848 330294

Contact
Fiona Purdie wallacehall@alv.dumgal.org.uk

Visit our website

Diary of a website: July '05

I have to admit that I was a tad apprehensive when I left the training day - here was I, a woman who could only just fumble her way around a computer, but who had little idea of what it actually did or how it worked, being sent home with a pen drive, I pod, and a wee booklet that was going to tell me how to create a masterpiece to be viewed by the world.

Now I’m almost done.

I have made a huge number of mistakes, and have had to create and recreate, cut; paste; change grids, columns, rows, fonts, colours and have discovered what a marquee is (and here’s me thinking it was just a big tent - how naive!), but on the whole, I’m pretty proud of myself, and believe it or not, it was nowhere near as hard as I though it was going to be, and way more fun. I admit, I have become a bit obsessed, and have found myself waking up in the middle of the night thinking: “It might work better if I do….” and logging on at my next free moment to give a brainwave a shot.

Purpose

We wanted a web page that would give information to everyone connected to the school; parents, pupils, staff, prospective pupils and staff - basically everyone!

This meant we had to think clearly about what was going to go on the website, and make sure it was easy to navigate.

Planning

I created a template on publisher (sorry, it's on my school computer - I'll add it when term starts again, if I can find it) on which I wrote the names of pages I wanted to add, and to see if links could be made. From that I got all the relevant info saved onto the pen drive. I also spent a lot of time looking at other schools' websites, seeng what I liked and didn't like.

Background

I started off with getting my basic page set up. However, I had some fancy ideas about saving the school badge as a watermark for my background, and spent ages fiddling with badges and saving them on “paint”, but although I got the badge as I wanted it, it didn’t work as a background because whenever I pasted pictures on to the page, they were always a bit off centre with the badge, and it looked pretty dreadful. I eventually gave up and went on the web, looking for free backgrounds for web pages. I had to wade through lots of backgrounds for phones and desktops, but eventually found what I was looking for. Sorry, I can’t remember the web address, but it wasn’t too hard to find, or I wouldn’t have found it!.

Banner

I learned my lesson from the background fiasco, so went on to Google and typed in “free banners for web site” and came across a site called banner-generator.com, which does as it says. I looked through the different banners, chose one and played around with it. It lets you add your own text, does skyscraper banners for down the side of your site with the menu, and even does flash banners (though I couldn’t get mine to load onto the web page).
Again it took time, and had to be loaded onto “paint” as the banner they produced wasn’t the size I wanted it, so I had to stretch it a bit. This did distort it slightly, but it was still far better than anything else I could come up with.

What information to include and in what format?

I basically got everything I could think of from the school prospectus and handbook to random photos of staff and everything in between. The Rector had some idea of what he wanted included, and the Office Staff were very helpful finding everything on the computer and loading it onto the pen drive. Some stuff I haven’t used, but may find a place for it later.
I also had to ditch some stuff - I was given an 87 page document of exam statistics which I couldn’t understand, so how were the folk logging on going to, so I found an alternative, by creating an outside link (change page layout to multi media file, and click on the wee chain near the bottom - but make sure you include a picture to click on) to the Scottish Schools Online website, where, if you type in the name of the school, it will give you the relevant stats for your school including comparisons to the regional and national averages. Far easier to understand, I can tell you!
Our school also had a recent inspection, so I created an outside link to the relevant Hmie web pages, so it was easy to view.
I found that using outside links were much better than using a download file which can take ages, especially if you don’t have broadband.

What type of page layout to use?

We were told that the flexible grid layout was the easiest to use, but I could never get things centred, or they would sometimes work but not others. I’ve no idea what I did wrong. If I needed more that one picture on a page, then I used it and crossed my fingers. However, most of the time I used the multi media download page as I found it worked! It sounds very complicated, but was dead easy to use. Go figure.

Creating

Once I had all the page layout sorted, it really was just a case of cutting, pasting and browsing, then seeing how it looked. Sometimes I decided I didn’t like the page layout, so changed it (though beware, copy your text as it will wipe), then adding the fancy stuff like colour and marquees. Dead easy.

What next?

I’m seeing the regional ICT development officer to see if she can help me with things I’m not happy with, such as when I’ve had to use a download, the icon isn’t too pretty - I want to see if I can access it through a picture like I managed with the outside link.
I’ll let you know how it goes…

Update 1

I'm back.Finally went live although it took ICT Development Officer to do that - I had no idea! It's still got a lot to do to it - I only had a few pictures saved, so it's the same photo over and over again, but I'll get that changed as soon as we're back.

Only problem is that although we're up and running, if I type the school name into google etc, the website doesn't pop up as an option. I'll work on that.

Update 2

I have finally worked out how to use the i-pod! The training was fine, but if you're anything like me, all things go well when the experts are there, but the moment you get home and try it yourself, it all goes pear shaped! Anyway, after Kate (ICT Officer - very useful person to know - if you don't know you region's ICT Officer, get to know them quick - get them a box of chocs, bottle of wine etc - you never know when you're going to need them!!!) explained what to do with Audacity and Lame (no, they meant nothing to me either, but at least they work now - I do not question how or why!) things started to work! I now have sound downloaded onto the site. I have got pupils reciting their own poetry, and some musical items. The school is having a "Creativity Evening" in a coule of weeks, so I will be taping some of that too. Great fun, and the pupils love to hear themselves perform.