This is the first website that I have ever done, but hopefully people will find it interesting and useful.  As Leicester FoE Media Officer I have felt for some time that our group needed a proper website, so I signed up for a ten week Open University course in basic webdesign, T183 and I designed a site for Leicester FoE for the course assessment.  This site is based on the site that I designed for the assessment, with some revision to convert it from an academic assignment and with a lot of additional material added.

Quite a few other local FoE groups also have their own websites, but many others do not.  For those groups who don't already have a site, would like one, but don't have anyone experienced in website design, I thought that it might be helpful if I provided some notes on how I did this site.

The first thing that I think needs to be said, for fellow novices, is that you don't need to be able to write HTML code, there are programmes that will do it for you. This site was put together using a programme called Nvu, which can be downloaded free from the internet.  I found Nvu just as easy to use as Word.  The Nvu site also has links to tutorials on using it and further advice on doing websites.  

If you want to use Nvu, the tutorials should teach you things such as how to use tables to lay out a page, how to insert images and how to set up links.  You can set up three kinds of links, links to external sites, links to "anchors", within a page and links to other pages on your site (either just to the page, or to "anchors" within it).  

One thing that is worth bearing in mind, when inserting images and linking pages, is that you need to keep all your pages and images together in one folder and ensure that the box "URL is relative to page location" is ticked, when inserting them.  If you don't do this the links will work OK on your computer, but when they are uploaded to a server, for public access, the link will be trying to find the file at an address on your computer, which is no longer accessible.

The other major thing that I think is worth bearing in mind is that you need to keep image files small.  If you don't then pages will take a long time to load, especially for people who do not have broadband.  This is likely to lead to many people giving up without ever looking at your site and even if they don't give up they will find it frustrating to use.  Bitmap image files use a great deal of memory and are not suitable for use on websites.  If you have bitmap image files then resave them as JPEG.  Having done this reduce the image to the size you want and then reduce the resolution to 72 dpi.  This is the maximum resolution that you can get on a computer screen and any higher resolution will just be wasted, at considerable expense in file size.  I used Paint Shop Pro Studio to do this, but there are other free resources available on line.

Once you put a site together, you then of course need to publish it.  To do this you need an ISP that will provide website space.  Both the Nvu site and the FoE advice give some guidance on this.  In the case of this site a friend has kindly lent me some of the server space that he already rents.  Preferably you also want your own "domain name", so that you can have an address like www.leicesterfoe.org, rather than a clumsier and less personal address like www.our-party.org.uk/foe/, which is where my files are actually hosted.  I arranged to register a domain name through Just the Name, at a cost of just £9.99 for two years.

Another piece of advice that may be helpful is regards to file names.  When I first uploaded my files I found that www.leicesterfoe.org.uk displayed the file index, rather than my homepage, which I had called home.  To get the home page you had to use the address www.leicesterfoe.org.uk/home.html.  To get the home page to display with just www.leicesterfoe.org.uk I had to change the name of the homepage file to index.

Any other groups who want to are free to use and adapt my pages, all that I ask is that you incorporate an acknowledgement and a link to Leicester's site and that you e-mail me to let me know when you have something up and running, so that I can have a look at your site and perhaps use some of your ideas.  Also feel free to e-mail me with feedback and suggestions, although not too technical please, as I am only a novice and not a computer buff.

Finally, I have included links to a range of resources that might prove useful, in the column to the right, although I have to admit that apart from Nvu, Smart ftp, picfindr and the FoE pages I haven't yet explored many of them properly, they are just resources that other people have told me about.

Good Luck and Best Wishes

Malcolm Hunter, Leicester FoE Media Officer

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