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This document describes the general
steps necessary to download and customize the United
Methodist church website template. Since you can use any
HTML editor or hand HTML coding to customize the
template, these instructions by necessity only describe what
must be done and not how to do it. These
instructions assume you know how to do the steps
described in your HTML editor.Downloading and
unzipping the template files
The website template files are delivered compressed
in a "zip" file. Before you can start
customizing the template, you must first download the appropriate
zip file and unzip the template files into a
directory/folder on your computer's hard disk. If you're
not sure how to deal with zip files, check out Susan
Brumbaugh's Zip
FAQ. You can also download the template files
individually from the Template
Structure page.
Once you've unzipped the files onto your computer's
hard drive, you should be ready to open the pages in your
web page editor to begin customizing this website. If
you move any files to another directory (like putting the
GIF files in an 'images' subdirectory), you'll have to
edit all pages in the site to update the links to the
file(s) in the new location. Also, if you rename any of
the pages (like renaming blank.htm to blank.html), you'll
also have to correct any links to the renamed page(s).
Customizing the template page
As is mentioned on the Template
Structure page, each page of this template is very
similar, with only a couple of areas that differ. The
common areas are:
- Cross and flame logo
- List of links in the left-hand column
- Contact information at the bottom of the pages
To customize the template page (blank.htm), you should
do the following:
- List of links - Since you will be adding pages to
your site by opening the template page and saving
it under a different name (see below), you'll
save yourself a lot of time later by customizing
this page as much as possible before you create
other pages from it. If possible, before you
start editing any pages, decide what pages you
want in your website. After you have done that,
you can edit the list of links to include a line
for each of your intended pages. If you also
decide in advance on the file names of your
planned pages, then you can also go ahead and
create the links to those (as yet non-existent)
pages in the list of links. This way, once you've
created all those pages, your list of links will
be complete and functional.
- Contact information - Customize the contact
info at the bottom of the template page before
you start creating other pages from it.
Customizing the home page
Before you publish your site, you'll need to do the
following to customize the home page (index.htm) of your
site:
- Change the page title (the text that appears at
the top of the browser window, and in the HTML
code, between the <TITLE></TITLE>
tags) to your site's name. In FrontPage 98, the
page title is accessible by selecting the Page
Information item on FrontPage Editor's File
menu. For the sake of search engines' cataloging
of your site, it is suggested that you make the
page name the entire name of your
church--including "United Methodist
Church" spelled out--and its city and state
(e.g., "John Doe United Methodist Church in
Centerville, Kansas").
- Customize the values of the description
and keywords "meta" tags. The
information you provide here is included in
special "meta" tags in your home page's
HTML code. The content of these tags isn't
displayed in browsers, but some search engines
use the meta tag information when they catalog
your site. For more information on what meta tags
are, how all this works and what values to enter
for these meta tags, see A
Webmaster's Guide to Search Engines. In
FrontPage 98, the meta tags are accessible by
selecting the Page Information item on
FrontPage Editor's File menu.
- Change the page title that appears in the page
banner at the top of the page from "Church
Name United Methodist Church" to your
congregation's name
- Make sure that the set of links in the left-hand
column contain links to all pages in your site
(same as you did in customizing the template
page).
- Replace the dummy content of the home page (i.e.,
"Welcome to the website of Church Name
United...") with the real content for your
home page.
- Customize the contact information at the bottom
of the page (same as you did in customizing the
template page).
Creating new pages from the template page
After you've customized the template page, you can add
pages to your site by opening the template page in your
HTML editor and saving it under another name (usually
"Save As..."). Or, if you're hand-coding HTML,
copy and paste this page to another name. After you
create another page from the template page, do the
following to complete the new page:
- Change the page title (the text that appears at
the top of the browser window, and in the HTML
code, between the <TITLE></TITLE>
tags) to your site's name. For the sake of search
engines' cataloging of your site, it is suggested
that the page title consist of the church name
and the page name (e.g., "John Doe UMC -
Worship Services" or "Worship Services
- John Doe UMC"). Including the church name
in every page name will provide one more visual
clue to the site's visitors as to which site
they're on.
- Change the text in the page banner at the top of
the page.
- Replace the dummy page content with your real
content.
- If you don't already have a link to this page in
the list of links, update the list of links on
every page in the site.
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