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Mozilla Composer: Your First Webpages

Mozilla Composer. Last week, you installed Mozilla Seamonkey Composer on your computer. This week, you will use Composer to publish two webpages to your OU webspace - a homepage (to replace the default homepage that appears when you first activate your webpage), and also an "About Me" webpage. You will include text and links on these webpages; next week you will learn how to add images to your webpages.

• NOTE if you already have an OU homepage. If you have already publishing a homepage in your OU webspace and you do not want to replace it with this assignment, that is not a problem! Please name your page "onlinehome.html" instead of the "home.html" filename in the assignment, and make sure you send me an email to let me know that is what you are doing.
• NOTE if you already took a class with me. This assignment is the same as in previous semester; if you already have published your homepage and "About Me" pages in a previous class, please just send me an email to let me know, and go ahead and do the Declaration - you're done!
• NOTE if you want to use different software. You can use whatever software you want to create and publish your webpages for this class, but I will not be providing technical support for any software other than Mozilla Seamonkey Composer.
• NOTE if you want to use non-OU webspace. It is fine with me if you use non-OU webspace, provided that the space has no banner advertising or other forms of advertising on th epages you publish for class. If you are publishing in non-OU space, make sure you send me an email to let me know the web address where you have published your assignment.
• NOTE if you are working in an OU-IT computer lab. Although I strongly strongly STRONGLY encourage you to use your own computer to do the web publishing assignments for this class, here are some notes about Using Composer in IT Computer Labs. Again, I strongly recommend against this option: all the other assignments for this class can be completed from any computer, but the web publishing assignments depend on having local copies of your files that you save each week, which is difficult to do while working in a computer lab.

Okay, I think that covers all the different situations - and now, you are going to publish some webpages!

Webpage Assignment #1: Publish an OU Homepage and an "About Me" page

You will publish two pages this week:

• OU Homepage: This page should be named home.html and it must contain - at a minimum - your name and a link to the "About Me" page.
• About Me page: This page should be named aboutme.html and it must contain - at a minimum - a paragraph about yourself, plus a link to a favorite webpage, and a link back to your OU Homepage.

Here are some extremely detailed instructions explaining how to create these pages. If you are new to web publishing, I would strongly advise you to PRINT out those instructions, and check off each step, one by one, as you read them out loud to yourself. The key is to slow down, and be very careful in checking off each step.

If you do this carefully, one step at a time, you can complete the assignment in about 30-45 minutes. If you do not follow the instructions extremely carefully, you are going to spend hours on this assignment and get very frustrated. So, save yourself some frustration by printing out the instructions and checking them off one by one.

If you get stuck... Do not spend more than one hour trying to do this assignment on your own if you are having problems. If you get stuck, delete the webpage folder with your files in it and just start over from the beginning. Please give it one full hour of your best effort, and if you are still stuck, contact me for help. When you contact me for help, please tell me exactly at which step in the process you seem to be stuck.

AND DON'T DESPAIR: Every single student who has ever taken one of my classes has published a complete website. This means there are about one thousand students (no kidding!) who have learned how to publish a website this way. So, whatever happens: don't panic! I know it can be frustrating at first but - I promise - you will have a wonderful website by the end of the semester that you can be very proud of!

Make your Gradebook Declaration

When you are done, make your Gradebook Declaration for this assignment.