1. How to Design and
Write Web Pages Today
Written By: Karl Stolley

2.  The arts are made great, not by those who are without
scruple in boasting about them, but by those who are
able to discover all of the resources which each art
affords.
—Isocrates, ca. 390 B.C.1

3. What You Need to Know Before
Reading…
 This book will not teach you all you need to know about
writing and designing for the web
 Instead, this book is the base
 Not one single book can teach you all you need to
know, but this book is your first step

4. Web is a language, consisting of…
 Rhetoric
 Defined as “a productive, generative art of communicating with other
human beings."
 The art of rhetoric enables people to discover and provides the available
means for developing something to say, and for supporting what they say.
 Written content, crowd sourcing, public web spheres, etc.
 Rhetoric also suggests how to establish the best form to say something
in, and to deliver the form appropriately for a particular audience in a
particular context of time, values, and beliefs.
 Design and layout
 Anyone can post a site but the real key is getting audience to return to that
site
 It’s own language
 Extensible Hypertext Markup Language (XHTML)
 Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
 ECMAScript (JavaScript)

5. Besides Writing, You’ll Also Learn
 Knowledge and vocabulary
 “In order to join or even simply benefit from the knowledge of
any community—whether photographers, football
fans, carpenters, knitters, poker players, medical doctors, or
Web designers—you have to know or be willing to learn the
words that that community uses in addition to engaging in
photography, carpentry, poker, or whatever activity the
community is known for.”
 Essential tools and technology
 Tools are the languages: XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, and pieces
of software (text editor, search engine and web browser)

6. The Organization of the Book
 “What Am I Writing?”
 Looks at the rhetorical situation of the Web and online identity developmentand control
 “Issues and Challenges”
 Guiding principles for making informed decisions aboutyour site
 Text and images on individual pages
 Navigation and architecture (accessibility, usability, and sustainability)
 “Strategies for Success”
 Essential techniques and strategies you need to write and design individual Web pages.
 Branding, textand media content, and navigation.
 “Problems and Solutions”
 Challenges surrounding construction and maintenance ofa web site
 Covers tracking visitors, using site statistics packages, andsocial media sharing
 “Resources for the Future”
 Extending your knowledge of writing and designing for the Web

7. Why Are You Writing?
 Writing to be found
 Improve your chances of receiving a top ranking position in search engines
 Do a Google search of yourself
 Website has no chance if it can’t be found
 Found in safe way
 Writing to establish an online identity
 Micro-blogging is first step (twitter)
 Twitter teaches us important lessons to take into consideration when writing
 Be interesting, frequent, quick to the point, published, conscious of network
connections and linking to others
 Writing to connect to people
 Once you are found, it is your job to establish a online connection with
people, sites and other blogs
 Gets your website out and keeps it interesting

8. What to Know When Writing Web
Content:
 Is crucial to your site being found and accessible.
 No matter what you put on the web as content
(images, audio, etc), it should all have text equivalents
 Web audiences expect written content to be direct and to the
point, with plenty of headings and lists to make the content
navigable.
 Written content should be rich with keywords that you think
your intended audience might plug in to search engines.

9. Issues and Challenges
 Accessibility, Usability, and Sustainability
 Each is broken up into its own chapter
 They are “three overarching and interrelated issues
that largely determine the rhetorical success of a
Website.”
 Many associate these three with the matters of
assessment and are handled prior to the creation of the
site. However, each provide powerful guides to the
choices you will have to make throughout the process
of Web writing and design.

10. Accessibility
 Accessibility is about equitable access for
all, regardless of physical abilities or means of access.
 Contemporary Web sites must work on fast and slow
Internet connections, on ultra widescreen desktop
computers and miniature cell phone screens, with
keyboards,touchpads/touchscreens, and mice.
 Sites must also be accessible to search engines, or
your content will never be found

11. Usability
 Usability is often associated with “usability testing,”
where trained experts observe targeted users
interacting with a Web site. But usability can also
inform your approach to designing for site performance
and user expectations.
 Usability helps you earn the good will and attention of
your audience.
 Keep in mind:
 Usability is not function alone: people like things that
function well, but they like fun and pleasing things even
more

12. Sustainability
 A site that is accessible and usable today must
continue to be so.
 Digital technologies change quickly but there are
certain design practices and choices that will better
future-proof your Web site.
 Sustainability is also about the access and use of a site
as the site grows, or scales.

13. Quick Summary of Web
Languages
CSS
(Design)
XHTML
XHTML
(Walls)
(Walls)
JavaScript
(Appliances)
XHTML
(Foundation)

14. In Relation to Information
Design
 “Information design is the most comprehensible way to
present the information you have to a wide
audience, despite their language or culture, and can be
interpreted easily in a clear and presentable
manner, establishing high integrity for such
information.”

15. In Relation to Information
Design
 This book pieces together two essential concepts that a person needs to
utilize information design in the best possible way (rhetoric/writing & web
design/ coding)
 Information Design Handbook: “users don’t want to think, they just want to
understand.” (O’Grady 12).
 We need to understand another area of design and content, which is the web, in
order to fully be able to master information design
 Think about the quote in the beginning?
 With the amount available online today and the ways people are beginning to
access this information, we need to know how to distinguish ourselves apart
from the others.
 Information has become so complex that we need a way to sort through it all
and make sense of all of it. There is no way this could be done without
knowing how to effectively create a website

16. Targeted Audiences
 PW students
 Lets you see first hand how information design is necessary in
designing and writing websites
 ENGL 306, 409: This book will provide a base to
understanding and learning more about web design
 Graduates/ job seekers: HTML experience?
 Everyone is producing information, how are we going to set
ourselves apart?
 The world today is calling for multi-skilled workers
 Tech students/Engineering Students
 Already have prior knowledge of technology but lack the
rhetoric
 This book is a clear example of why these students are
required to take PW classes.

17. Targeted Audiences
 Business professionals
 HTML Experience is now becoming a major asset to have
 Give you an upper hand
 Scholars/ Teachers
 Puts rhetoric into a new form of understanding that not many
focus on
 In a context that students will understand
 Anyone interested in learning more about the
web or learn about writing well.

18. My Final Opinion
 Can I design my own website now?
 Wix.com
 Wordpress.com
 Which one more important than the other? Writing or
technological knowledge?
 This book introduces you in the simplest way possible
to a very confusing world and language
 Gives you a base to grow upon without