Invent a company in your major, one that you will then work for. Determine your job title. Site will have 4 components: Home page 2 articles (min. 750 words each) Intranet section Begin brainstorming home page content. Much of the content you can derive by looking at similar (effective) sites. Lean on your Group Website experience to then start designing look and layout: categories, links, columns, graphics, which items will be in some sort of menu/tab formation and which will stand out accompanied by text and a separate link, keywords, greeting/introductory material (not unlike your first blog entry, but way shorter). Come up with two article ideas. Each must: Be interesting to your targeted audience Have a headline and at least three sub-headings (keywords, keywords) Include two graphics Have at least four links (embedded text, graphics—your choice) to external sites for supplemental information Have at least one internal link Follow proper Web writing format (concise writing, shorter sentence construction, streamlined vocabulary) Design and create Intranet page (covered next class session).

Things to remember:

Clearly define your audience before you start. Use highlighting techniques (bold, italics, color, font size and style) to help your keywords stand out—not just in headings but also in the text Use lists wherever possible Label and caption your graphics Write in the inverted pyramid style (most important stuff at the start; also, front-load your sentences so they, too, begin with the most important information) Control metadiscourse

Don’t worry yet about creating the site; we’ll deal with that down the road (including some in-class tutorials if need be). But you can at least design the site: storyboard, page sketches. I recommend that your draft versions of the articles be at least 1000 words long, because they will shorten as you revise them (you know, concise writing, lists, substituting graphics for text).

Rick Steeves Article