Tech Tools

= Tech Tools =

This document presents several options for tools you might use in creating your Web site mockup for presentation. Please remember that the point of the exercise is to really think through the content and not to get hung up on the tools! You should only opt to use one of these if you are already very comfortable with creating Web pages and/or using blogging or wiki software.

Blogging
One quick way of getting content online is to set up a blog. Most blog software will allow multiple authors and some will allow you to alter templates and layout. For the purposes of giving you an easy-to-use tool that is free, quick to set up, and gives you good access to code, we recommend you use Blogger.

When you sign up, you can add all the members of your team as contributors (you can even have multiple blogs).This will allow each of you to create content as you go.

If you have good code familiarity, you can get directly into the code of a Blogger blog by going into the Template tab. You can change style sheets and HTML in this template and apply those changes too the pages of the blog. This isn’t for the faint of heart: Blogger’s templates are built with CSS and very current HTML, so if you don’t already know HTML, messing with the templates isn’t a great idea.

Here are a few quick and dirty ways you might be able to make a Blogger work for you: • Go to the Template tab and choose the Pick New tab. Find a pre-prepared layout that gets close to the layout you want to create (i.e. two columns, three columns, etc.) • Apply the new template • Create separate blog entries for each “page” of your Web site. View your blog and note down the permalink URLs of each page. • Go into the template code and edit the sidebar area to add links to each of your pages. • Voila! Instant Web site with multiple pages.

Wiki
A wiki is a collaboratively produced Web site, one built by a community of members over time. Essentially, a member can edit a page, another member can edit that member’s contribution, another can delete the whole thing. If you haven’t experienced a wiki before, check out Wikipedia ; Wikipedia is a worldwide encyclopedia created and maintained by members of the public.

A wiki can be created and maintained by your team collaboratively – in fact they make great planning tools. In the case of your presentation, you should be able to set up a simple set of pages and links to display your content.

We recommend you use Wiki Labs Scratchpad, a free wiki offering based on that created to run Wikipedia. If you’re familiar with creating Web pages, you’ll need to wrap your mind around some new coding syntax, but if you haven’t got any HTML you shouldn’t find it too difficult to create pages and get started.

Please keep in mind that wikis are about information organization and not design, so although you can do some layout work, this is going to be largely about navigation and text. (For an example of what I mean, check out Wookiepedia at .)