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Planning Your History Day Web Site

Web designers compare building a web site to building a house. When building a house, the architect first decides the important features of the house (such as how many bedrooms the house will have and how many square feet it will be). Next the house is drawn on paper, plotting out the layout of the rooms and making sure these elements are arranged in a way that will be comfortable. Only after plans are completed and double checked does anyone pick up a hammer to begin construction. Prior planning and building your web site in the right order will save you a lot of time, energy, and frustration.

Figure Out What You Need in Your Site
As the web designer, it's your job to decide what you want your audience to learn from your web site and to figure out how you will teach it to them. Write down the major ideas you have about your topic on notecards. That way, you can lay out these cards and rearrange them to understand how the ideas fit together. What categories do they fall into? What order should they be arranged in? How do these ideas relate to the thesis? Once you feel comfortable with these categories, they will become the pages of your web site.

Create Your Blueprints
Create the blueprints for your web site by using unlined paper to draft what will go on each page and how it will be organized.
  1. Site Design: What is the template for the web site? Are you going to create one or use a template from a prebuilt program? What colors, fonts, and general style will you use on the site? How will all the pages link together to create the entire site?
    • Page template
    • Diagram of the organization web pages created
  2. Page Content: What are the headings for each of the pages? What information should go on each page? Remember, drafting your text during this step in a word processing program will be much easier than writing it in the web design program.
    • First draft of text for pages
  3. Non-Textual Content and Interactive Elements: As you draft your site on paper, you will also have to decide what non-textual content (illustrations, media, etc.) and interactive elements you will include. What photos or multimedia are available? How will each piece help the viewer understand your argument and topic? How can you engage the viewer through interactive elements?
    • Non-textual content selected
    • Captions written
    • Interactive elements identified and planned
Look It Over
Once you have your first paper draft of the web site ready, look it over to see how all the elements fit together. Have a teacher, friend, or a family member look it over to get feedback from an outside observer before you begin.

Begin Construction
After taking these initial steps, you're ready to begin constructing your web site. Become familiar with the program and start translating your ideas into reality!
   

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