InfoCom Center ICT, Bisiness, CBO and NGO Consultants

Web design course is a very comprehensive, detailed offline course that teaches concepts, how to plan, organize, and create a web site from start to finish. The course places a heavy emphasis on individual page design and layout. Using some very powerful techniques taught in this course, some of them are HTML, XHTML, PHP, java, MySQL and CSS. You will learn skills and techniques on how even the most simplest of pages can be arranged to look more appealing and professional! From the start and the end of this design course, students will have created from simple html page to a well-designed web site and publish it at every stage of development. By regular and subsequent publishing we hope a student will obtain a profound ability to work on the server basic operations like updating, correction, script installment, database configuration and deployment plus many other skills.

Targeted Audience
This course is intended and recommended for:

• People with little or no knowledge about how to start designing a website
• Hobbyists who want to gain web design skills for fun
• Web designer who want to Develop or improve their web design skills
• Any person who need to gain or Improve and manage well his/her personal/organization web site

Each student will create a web page that integrates the many topics covered in the course manuals and lectures. The student will upload on the server and update each pages created during previous weeks to conform to the current lesson, resulting in a polished web site online. Some of the areas to be discussed in this course are:

Week 1: Introduction to Webdesign -Part I Evolution

* Internet, Websites and Web design evolution & Concepts (from table to CSS layout, from html to xhtml, from static to dynamic, to flashy, to animated web etc)
* Introduction to html (creating a simple page "hello world, Hello Tanzania" using html code and publish it)

Week 2: Introduction to Webdesign Part II HTML

* More about html,
* HTML static website design mini-project

Week 3: Introduction to Webdesign Part II About Java, PHP and MySQL

* Introduction to Java scripting
* Introducing PHP Scripting
* Introduction to Access and MySQL databases

Week 4: Webdesign Concept

* Planning to design
* Defining the purpose
* Describing the Audience
* Contents Relevancy & Presentation style
* Compatibility (deferent technologies, browsers and monitor resolutions)
* Documentation (for backing up and future developments)
* Preparing tools
* Website Need Analysis
* Designing a pilot web site (Using Website X5-WYSIWYG Editor etc)
* Creating a project
* Putting the website attributes
* Website title
* Website description
* Keywords
* Putting the copyrighted footer
* Logo
* Page titles and attributes as above
* Deciding on menu type
* Vertical
* Horizontal
* Deciding the website style
* Layout
* Theme
* Putting the page structure (navigation system)
* Main menu
* Footer menu
* Putting the website contents
* Formatted text contents
* Putting the banner
* Putting scrolling text
* Putting images and flashes
* Putting streaming video and audio
* Publishing the pilot page

Week 5: Web Graphics Editing Basics

* Graphic design concept
* Image optimization
* Image resizing
* Image Resolution
* Image type
* Introduction to adobe Photoshop
* The use of MS Photo manager for effective graphic optimization
* An Introduction to Ulead Photo Express

Week 6: Creating a customized website

* Creating a project
* Put all materials in the main folder and several other sub-folders should be created according to contents inside example, contents for finished project should be named as website, contents for images, menu, draft information etc
* Putting the website attributes
* Website title
* Website description
* Keywords
* Putting the copyrighted footer
* Logo
* Deciding on menu type
* Vertical
* Horizontal
* Deciding the website style
* Layout
* Theme
* Color scheme
* Web Font scheme
* Size
* Resolution
* Putting the page structure (navigation system)
* Creating a master page basing on the above attributes
* Putting the website contents
* Creating a home page
* formatted text contents
* Putting the banner
* Putting scrolling text
* Putting images and flash
* Putting intra and inter page links
* Putting external links
* Putting redirecting links
* Creating a web form
* Putting photo browser/album/slideshow
* Putting moving/flash movies
* Inserting other scripts like java and php
* Defining links colors
* Visited link
* Active link
* Mouse over link
* Publishing the page

Week 7: Testing and Wrap-up

* Creating a PHP web forms (feedback form)
* Creating webmail account
* Migrating to advanced multimedia website (Creating banners, news tickers, slideshow, web album, music album and streaming video)
* Testing and maintaining your site
* Registering your commercial domain
* Website backup, uploading and downloading
* Search Engines Optimization (SEO)
* Google adWords (Pay Per Click)
* Server control panel management,
* Other crosscutting issues Readability (Usability, Visibility, Catch-ability, Availability, Accessibility, Printability)

Week 8: Final Project

* A student will create a final project website

Course Prerequisites Knowledge

* Introduction to computer
* Internet and email
* Office application
* It is helpful, but not required, to have some knowledge of graphics optimization for internet etc

Course Requirement

* Web space for hosting your completed assignments.
* FTP software for uploading assignments, such as CuteFTP or FileZila
* At least two current versions web browser for testing. recommended internet explorer and mozilla firefox (optional Safari and Opera)
* HTML editor (optional) or plain text editor for hand coding recommended Notepad/WordPad
* Flash Maker for flash web effects,
* Total Converter for total multimedia conversions from normal formats to flash formats,
* Website x5 for creating website
* AllWeb Menu maker (for creating Java menus),
* Amara flash video and news ticker
* eFronteer (MotionArtist) for banner and animations creation
* Adobe photoshop v 7 and above
* Ulead photo Express v3 and above
* Dream weaver

Results
After this course a student will be able to write simple website using html tags, create a complex website using WYSIWYG Programs, Host a website in a free or paid server, manage the website, update the website, create emails, etc