How do we go live?

Contents

1. Making your school website live

2. Choosing a domain name
3. Using online tools
4. Using offline tools
5. Maintaining your website

Making your school website live

Before doing this you need to check that your site works.

•     Check that all graphics load correctly.
•     Make sure that all the links work and that they go to the right place.
•     Check that all the navigational buttons work and that they go to the right place.
•     Make sure that the website looks the same on a Mac and a PC.
•     Test the site on the most common web browsers, e.g. Internet Explorer and Firefox.
•     Get people to try the site out.        

Choosing a domain name

Every school in Scotland, through the Domain Names Rationalisation Project Scotland, has been allocated a unique domain name. This gives you the nationally recognised school address of ‘www.yourschoolname.eaname.sch.uk’. Contact your education authority to find out which name has been allocated to your school and the arrangements for using this. The education authority will need to establish appropriate name server entries to make a domain name operational.

Using online tools

Online web authoring provides you with an empty website into which you put your content using the tools and templates provided, which is a quick and easy way to create a website. Once the structure and design has been established it is easy to keep the site updated.  If you are allowing pupils to publish to the live site you need to monitor the work being produced.  You may want to arrange to have the schools or authority branding on the site as well.

If you are using a service provider that offers free service space, remember that they are entitled to place advertisements on your site and that you do not have any control over this.  

Here are some online tools that are specifically aimed at schools. Remember, some of these may be commercial sites.

Using offline tools

There are a number of packages available that let you design and create your website and then upload it to the internet. Many of these programs will simply upload your content with the click of a button. Programs such as Microsoft Frontpage and Macromedia Dreamweaver are specific web creation packages and are quite expensive.

For a less complex method you can also use word-processing packages and DTP programs that allow you to save your work as a web page, such as Microsoft Word, Microsoft Publisher and Textease 2000.

Maintaining your website

Once the website is live it is important to keep it updated with current and relevant information for staff, parents and pupils.   Remember to keep checking for broken links as these can frustrate visitors to the site. This can be a tedious task but there is software that can help you.