Notes for Authors

This page holds a few brief notes for those creating pages to add to the WUNA site. We all feel it is important to present a common look and organization, so please observe these few simple guidelines. If you have special situations or questions, or need a template to work from, please contact the Webmasters Stephanie Bury Sutton at inform[at]trustedsystems.com or Paul Debevec at debevec[at]uiuc.edu.

Creating HTML

Use whatever tool you like to create HTML. Netscape used to be free and has a nice built-in HTML editor. You can create HTML with any text editor, however. Just grab an existing page from our Web site that looks a lot like the one you want (use the "Save as..." menu on your browser) and modify it with your own "filling."

Please avoid using Microsoft Word unless your copy creates the "simple" HTML we discuss below (generally Office 97 is probably okay -- Office 2000 is monumentally bad). However, you'll have to add the LINK to the style sheet manually, typically using a text editor on the final HTML. See following.

Style Sheet

To assure that we maintain the same, consistent look, all WUNA pages should be linked to a common "style sheet." When we change the information in the style sheet, all pages on the site that reference it are automatically displayed by browsers in the new style. This lets us make uniform changes to the site quickly. Please help by staying within the guidelines.

First, make sure the following line is in the header of your HTML:

<HEAD ...>
...
<LINK REL="STYLESHEET" HREF="http://www.prairienet.org/wuna/styles.css">


...
</HEAD>
...

The style sheet defines styles for the common HTML elements:

<P>
<H1> <H2> <H3>
<UL> <LI>
<PRE>

and a few others. A few important notes:

Your paragraphs need to use the <P> tag to pick up the default style, even for text inside table cells. Many HTML editors don't automatically put these in. If fonts on your page don't have our common font (like this paragraph) then you've probably forgotten the <P>.
Stick the the simple styles shownabove -- do not change their format. You can of course use other styles, but if their font is not presented as our standard, we'll have to add it to our style sheet. Please E-mail the Web master.

When you are working with your page on your computer not connected to the Internet, your browser won't be able to find this link (or may try to dial-up the net). In this situation, you can drag down a copy of "styles.css" file from our Web site, put it in the same directory as your page-in-progress, then use the following shorter style sheet reference:

<LINK REL="STYLESHEET" HREF="styles.css">

However, please don't forget to change back to the "http://www.prairienet..." form before you put your page on the Web site.

Headings

Most pages are organized with "headings." For example, this page has a <H1> at the top, and several <H2> sections (like this "Headings" section). You do not need to use headings, but at least an <H1> at the top lets people know what your page is about. Generally, only long pages (several screens-full) need more than one <H1>. You can use <H2>'s without any <H1>'s if it looks cleaner. (The problem with using too many <H1>'s too close together is that they take up too much space -- <H2>'s often look better in these situations. Please go no further than <H3> for now. Most of all:

Do not use manually formatted paragraphs that serve as "headings" (for example, a paragraph with the single word "Introduction" made bold and larger font). Use the standard HTML tags <H1> through <H3> instead. Don't change the format of these headings. For better or worse, we should all stick with the same format.

Keeping it In-the-Frame

We like to keep most of our pages inside the main WUNA "frame." When you reference (link to) other pages from your page and browsers follow those links, the new pages generally appear in the frame also. If they do not, add the TARGET="body" attribute in the hyperlink, for example:

<A HREF="some_page.htm" TARGET="body">...</A>

Some pages don't look well within the frame, however. If you absolutely need to present another page in its own browser window, use the TARGET="_blank" attribute, for example:

<A HREF="some_page.htm" TARGET="_blank">...</A>

Paths to Other Pages

We organize our pages into sub-directories for different activities. If you are working on a page that is to go into one of these folders and you want to link to a page in your own folder, simply use its name, like:

<A HREF="my_file.htm">...</A>

If you want to reference a page in another folder, use:

<A HREF="../marketplace/some_other_file.htm">...</A>

If you need a page (or any other item) in the main directory, use:

<A HREF="../top_file.htm">...</A>

Style Considerations

Try to keep the following in mind when designing your page:

Feel free to use icons and images, but bear in mind that your page appears within the WUNA main frame. Try to pick something that doesn't clash, or put in on the right side of your page.