COMS 326 Fall 2012
Web Production: Student Pages (instructions)

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About this page and its links

The preliminary links above go to addresses students will use for course pages during the semester. The contents of the pages will change as the semester goes along. (A students "COMS 326 home page" is the main document in a folder called "coms326" in the students "public_html" folder on the university's RUacad ("H-drive") server.)

After making those folders and pages on the first day, students' "COMS 326 home pages" will have some "who I am and why I'm taking this class" information, along with links to the professor's course pages and any previous online work the students have done (personal home pages, COMS 226 work, blogs, Pinterest or Twitter pages, etc.).

As they grow, COMS 326 home pages usually mention the student's major and other academic interests -- as a getting-to-know-you exercise and to demonstrate Web paragraph and heading codes, and they will list a few favorite Web sites to demonstrate Web list-making codes.

A COMS 326 home page should not be confused with a Facebook profile or "personal home page." It should avoid vacation or social-event pictures, notes about family life and other personal details unless you plan to make them part of a course project.

You are welcome to use your main Radford Web folder as a separate "personal home page" and link to it, but it will not be a graded part of this course. Your COMS 326 pages should be fun and interesting, but ultimately should feel at home in a professional portfolio.

As early as possible, each student should edit his or her COMS 326 page to add a paragraph of ideas for the midterm "site-review" project and, later, a proposal for the final "site-development" project. As students actually DO the projects, they will design new pages, link to them, and turn the "proposal" paragraphs into descriptions of the completed projects.

The first text-only pages will evolve to includeimages and a more attractive layout. When you have more than one page, you will add a navigation menu to hold your "site" together.

In addition to the multi-page midterm and final projects, students will complete in-class exercise Web pages demonstrating Web tools and techniques, including a Unix text editor and the Dreamweaver page editor, as indicated by links on the list above.

Here's a "demo" version of a coms326 home page the way it might look after three or four classes.

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