Designing and creating a website
5. Designing a template - hyperlinks

The purpose of this activity is for you to link your pages together from the template to each major content page and to the home page.

You should create a temporary blank page for each content page to which you will link. In order to navigate between these documents, however, you need to link them. You should be aware of whether you want your pages to be linked in a linear or nonlinear way. One way in which the strength of a website is measured is by the extent to which:

• Sections of information in the same website link to each other; and
• Links to additional, reliable information on other websites are provided.

Remember, before you link pages to each other, the separate pages should have been created and saved as separate web pages.

Follow these steps to complete these activities. Look for contexts that are meaningful to you in your classroom.

Work on your own (15 minutes).

• Create a blank document to represent each file to which you will link from your template page. (You are doing this because it is more reliable to link to a file by pointing to it. In the next workshop you will overwrite these files with your completed template).

Work on your own (45 minutes).

• Create links between your pages.
• Create a link to your home page (called index.htm).
• Create a link to your email address.
• If your menu is graphic, you will use the image map to create hyperlinks from the images.

How pages can link to each other.

How to link to another web page.

How to link to another website.

How to link to an email address.

How to create an image map.

Test all your links online (15 minutes).

Save your template file (5 minutes).

Work in pairs (40 minutes).

• Share your final template with your partner and give each other feedback.
• Make changes to your template based on the feedback that you received.
• Save your final template and make the file attribute read only.