There is no single right way to create a homepage, and no two people are
going to create their pages in the exact same way. The steps below are only meant to be an
example guide to one way a budding author might successfully go about putting together a
set of pages. Information is adapted from the original at Iowa State
University.
 - What information do you want on your pages? Sit down with a sheet of paper and write
down all the ideas you can think of. Don't worry if they are good or bad ideas, or whether
you think it can be done or not on the web. The only goal here is to gather ideas. Check
out other web pages - see what kind of stuff they are doing. Ask around - get ideas from
office mates.
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 - Take all of the ideas from your brainstorm and sort them out. Arrange them in groups
that go well together and try to weed out poor ideas. Of the ideas you are going to try
and keep, arrange them into groups of basic information (address, hours, ...), general
information (staff, county council, ...), and detailed information (events, minutes, ...).
At this point, set complex stuff aside for long term projects later on.
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 - Put together a rough draft of your homepage. Don't bother putting in all the links at
this point, just get down the basic topics you want to appear. Remember, the homepage
should be an introduction and a summary page, don't try to put too much on one page. A
good homepage should fit on one printed page. Get a general idea of what you would like
the page to look like, but don't spend too much time on tiny details at this point.
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 - Break your homepage down into sections, pick a link and start creating sub-pages. Try
out a few different styles of what you would like lists to look like, how pages are to be
titled, and what information should appear on each page. The idea here is to explore
different ways of doing things. Once more, we are still not at the point where we should
worry about information detail.
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 - Go through the pages you've created and try to create a personal standard of how your
pages will look. Determine what information will be at the top and bottom of each page.
Develop include files and template pages so you can make consistency easier and more
accurate. Remember, the goal isn't to make the pages look sterile, but instead make them
look organized and thought out.
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 - Having adopted a standard, go though your homepage and make links to skeleton pages to
be filled in later. In those, put a title and brief description of what will be there.
Don't start creating the details of the page until you have created links and skeletons
for all of the pages. So, when you are finished, you should be able to move between the
pages and not get any "404 Not Found" error messages, and each page should have
a title and description of what will soon be there.
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 - Go though your homepage, and start filling in the sub-pages one by one. Start with the
pages that have information that is least likely to change in the near future. Be sure to
keep in mind the styles you have established for yourself. Every now and then as you go
along, return to finished pages and make sure things look consistent. After you have
created all the links from your homepage, check each sub-page and create the links that
follow off that page.
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 - Go through all your pages checking for problems. Have others in your office go through
the pages and check for mistakes. One useful tool is to copy the whole text, as it looks
in Netscape (not source code), to Microsoft Word and check for spelling mistakes. Note, if
there are spelling mistakes, you must go back and change them in their source code, not
just in Microsoft Word.
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 - Make sure all the links work. Make sure all the "Return" buttons take you to
the page you expect them to. Remove any links to uncompleted skeleton pages, and any
"Under Construction" notices you've placed. At this point your feeling should be
"everything is complete, if it were up to me, the initial link would be made
now."
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 - Submit your pages for an initial review to the web committee. Send e-mail to
wwwcommittee, be sure to include the URL to your homepage, your name, and the area your
pages cover.
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 - Once the committee has reviewed your pages, they'll send you a message with their
feelings for your pages and three lists. The first is a list of things you must change.
These are things which they feel do not follow the guidelines. Next will be a list of
typos and HTML errors. Finally, a list of suggested changes. These are changes which the
committee generally agrees will improve the look or content of your page, however are not
absolute, and will not prevent them from being linked. Once you have completed these
changes, resubmit the pages for review.
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 - Once your pages are linked in, it is your responsibility to keep them up to date and
accurate. This can potentially be the most challenging part of authoring. Information
which has become outdated and inaccurate is often more harmful than no information at all.
The committee does not routinely check pages it's already approved. However, if they
become aware of a problem they will inform you of it, and they reserve the right to remove
pages/links.
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