Designing your website

Now that you have a website available on your UNIX account, you must decide what to put into the website.  Your System Project will need a "homepage".  This is the entry point for your website.  It will be named index.html or index.htm (the default names used by many websites for the main entry page).  This page should be the introduction to your company.  It should have the company name and some information about the company.

Your System Project also includes quite a bit of documentation.  These will be done in Word, PowerPoint, WordPerfect or one of the other common programs for word processing or diagramming.  The computer uses the file extension i.e., .doc, ppt, to know what program to use to view your document.  We will use the computer's ability to identify the program to use in the website.  We will "link" your web page to the files, using the full filenames.  This way the computer can identify the program to use from the filename extension.

The System Project will include a "menu".  This is an area of the homepage, or a separate page, linked to the homepage, that will have a list of the documents that the user can select.  The documents will be kept on a floppy disk, which can be put into the A:\ drive of the computer.  The document names in the list will be linked to the files on the A:\ drive.  The link is done with the Anchor tag using a filename. 
For a User Manual file named user.doc, it will look like this: 
<a href="file:///a:/user.doc">Click here for the User Manual</a>.

The computer will launch the appropriate program when this link is clicked to view the document.  This way, you can supply your instructor with the floppy disk containing your documentation.  They will put it in the A:\ drive, and view the documents by clicking the links in your website.  See the Sample Project for an example.