Preparing Content for your Web Site
Overview - Keep It Simple! Using Content from other applications Using Microsoft Word Incorporating PowerPoint presentations All About Adobe Acrobat
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Using Microsoft Word

A (nearly) universal program

Nearly all schools will have a copy of Microsoft Word and most schools' offices and admin staff will use Word to prepare documents such as memos, letters, official documents and occasional newsletters (although newsletters are sometimes done in Microsoft Publisher).

This means that much of the information that you want to incorporate into your school web site will already be in an electronic format (i.e. on a computer somewhere) - and it's likely that much of it will be in Word.

What follows are some guidelines and tools to help you with using Word to prepare content for your school web site.

Keeping it simple

The principles for using Word are generally the same as other applications. However, if you use Dreamweaver (or even if you don't) there are particular issues that you need to be aware of.

When preparing content

Keeping it simple 1: just the facts

If someone supplies you with content for your school web site, they will often apply a lot of formatting, clip art, etc. Try to discourage them from doing this - you will probably have your own design, colours, styles and layout for your school web site and life is much simpler if you don't spend most of your time unpicking their formatting. The bottom line is that you need to know what text they are going to give you - if they can ensure the content of the text is accurate, you have time not to worry about the content and make it look nice(r).

Keeping it simple 2: it's WordArt, but is it Art?

As part of the process of creating a Word document, many people include things like text boxes, WordArt, clip art, tables as well as other things. Not all of these will be viewable in a web page.

Use the document below to find out some guidelines on what is useable in a web page and what isn't - you could give this to anyone who is supplying you with content before they start work on their documents!

• How to use Microsoft Word to prepare content for your school's web site

When importing that content into a web page

1. The Simple Way

As with many other applications, the simplest way is to Copy the text within Word and then Paste it into your web page, whether this is in Dreamweaver or any other application.

Advantages

It's easy!

It's quick.

Disadvantages

Any formatting will be lost - like bold, italics and any colours. If you want to retain this formatting - for example when you are transferring information from a long document, use the following method:

2. The Slightly More Complex Way

From within Word, select File > Save As Web Page...

This will save the document you are currently working on as a web page - certain elements will be lost (see above) but formatting such as bold, italic, bulleted lists, headings and any colours will be retained.

This will create a web page which you could incorporate as part of your web site. However, Word does not create 'tidy' HTML - if you are using Dreamweaver, it has a function to Clean Up Word HTML - as the name suggests this takes the HTML that Word creates and cleans it up. This can make files significantly smaller and removes some errors that Word creates when it makes the HTML.

If you are in a Hertfordshire school, one of the chapters in the HGfL Dreamweaver Manual explains how to do this in more detail.

If you don't have Dreamweaver or don't want to use it, you could try using HTML Tidy - which corrects 'invalid' HTML and can fix any errors made by Word.

• HTML Tidy home page

Advantages

Formatting is retained - very useful for long and/or complex documents.

A web page is created as part of this process.

Disadvantages

More complex than using Copy and Paste as detailed above. Another downside is that it is that once the HTML page has been created it is not always possible to change the formatting without first tweaking the HTML code.