Developing Site Content
What is a website without content? Useless really. Most people surfing the web are looking for information. This may be in the form of pictures they want to use in a word-processing document. They may be looking for technical support for a product. Perhaps they are looking for jokes or they want to learn about a particular subject (such as website design). Relevant content is therefore very important.
How do I generate the content?
Assuming you have established which categories the site fits into, you can now get to work on the content. Don't worry yet about the HTML - we can add that later. Write an outline (a list of topics/headings) in a word-processor or any text editor.
Once you are happy with the headings, insert the text that belongs to each of the headings. Bear in mind that you can always go back and add/change content later. (Most websites are updated on a regular basis anyway)
Using existing documents
You may already have a document that contains information you want to publish on your website. Say for instance that you have been collecting cooking recipes and keep them in a word-processing file, spreadsheet or database. You have decided to share them with the rest of the world. Why re-type them all if you can use that file as a starting point and add the markup to turn it into web-pages?
In the case of a business site, you are probably looking to market your products and services. Perhaps you already have documents describing the products and services you sell. Why not use these documents?
Converting existing documents
Recent versions of Microsoft® Office have tools built in for converting documents to HTML. We are not overly impressed with these conversion tools as in our experience the files they create are about 2-3 times the size they need to be. However, it is a rather convenient way to convert a document to HTML that way.
Large files are also a common problem with so-called WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors. We will cover this later. in the Download speed page.
There are other ways to convert your documents. For instance, there are RTF (Rich Text Format) to HTML conversion programs available. In addition, some (HTML) text editors have built in functions to clean up redundant code. There are also programs available to convert genealogy databases to HTML.
