420 Publishing a Website
Deciding the Site’s Purpose
Before you start building a website and sharing it with the entire world, it
wouldn’t hurt to develop a quick plan. Let’s begin by answering two questions:
What do you have to share?
Whom are you trying to reach?
Although these may seem like simple questions, they’ll help you assess what
you have and what you want to do with it. Do you have pictures you want to
share? Do you want to post highlights of your vacation with a blog? Do you
have videos you think others will want to watch? Making an inventory of your
website’s contents will help you build the website from the ground up, just like
the blueprints you’d use to build a house.
The second question relates to your audience. By identifying who you think will
come to your page, you can tailor the site’s appearance and content accordingly.
If you’re using iWeb to make a website for your business, that site will look very
different from one created to share photos with friends and family.
In this lesson, you’ll build a website that highlights a trip to Bhutan. The site
will include a homepage that welcomes visitors, a page that shows photos from
your trip, and a page to show a video that you edited in iMovie.
Choosing a Theme
Now that you’ve determined what you’re going to say and who you want to say it
to, it’s time to start making other decisions. The first step is to choose is a theme.
iWeb, iLife’s application for creating websites, has 28 Apple-designed themes
to choose from. Each theme has its own style, and the one you choose will
depend upon how you answered the questions at the start of the lesson.
For example, you might choose Darkroom to share your best photos with
other photo enthusiasts, or you might choose Notebook for an online journal.
Which theme you choose is really a matter of personal taste, but you should
keep your audience in mind. If you’re designing a website for a business, you’ll
find many classic and modern themes to choose from. Similarly, there are lots
of fun and playful themes designed for kids and teens that should match what-
ever “feel” you want your site to have.