Templates and Site Maps

The most important tool in keeping your Web site maintenance simple is a carefully planned template. A good template will save you time by establishing the settings for margins, titles, etc. This will eliminate the need for a significant amount of HTML coding when maintaining the Web site. Moreover, having a template is ideal because you want people to be familiar with your Web site and to be able to navigate through it easily.

There are now a variety of software packages available to draw the map of your Web site. For example, WebOutliner (http://www.gumption.de/weboutliner/) offers the following output templates: HTML table, Netscape bookmarks and Meta Content Template (MCF).

By having the pages named in a logical order, you will avoid confusion when re-publishing pages. For example: name the news page as "News.html" and the calendar of events for June as "Calendar_June.html." You can also keep a hard copy of your Web site's map in order to make it easy to visualize.