Website Plans

In ‘normal’ circumstances, we use “Publisher” for publications which are to be printed later.
But with the help of “Publisher” we can create a website. It is not as extensive as “Dreamweaver”, but when this is used only for personal information, or even for a small company, “Publisher” is good enough.

What we need to do is to plan our website.
What I mean is that you
1. must know for whom your website is meant (Determine your target audience).
2. must know what you want to achieve with this site (for example, is it a purely informational site or a store).
3. must have an idea of what you want your site to look like ( must it be a serious site or will this seem a bit distracting).
4. ensure that visitors can return to your site (site regularly updating). 

Web Site Creation

To create a website, click on the “File” button in the “Menu bar” and select “New”.
This opens the Welcome screen of “Publisher”.
Click on “Web Sites” in the lower pane.
Select from among the various examples displayed in the middle of the window.
And you have a number of options displayed on the left of the welcome window.
We have already seen the Color scheme, font scheme, and business data in previous lessons, but what is important are the two options described below.
The first is the “Navigation” option. Here you determine the position of the “Navigation bar”. Click the downward pointing arrow to select a different option. In this example I select “Only vertical”. Later, I can still make changes.

Below that we have the “Easy Wizard for Web” checkbox.
By default, this is unchecked.
This allows us to group our pages together.
If all your options are set, click on the “Create” button shown below.

This launches the “Create a website easily ” wizard.
In the window we select the options (read pages) which are to be added to our website.
I think this is all quite clear.
What I am saying is that the third option, “Product sales”, which is not really an online store, will be added to your site. This is only a catalog of various products.
In this example, I select the first three options.
I then click Ok

The “Web tools toolbar” appears.
The extra pages that I had selected in the wizard, will be added to my website.
The “Starting page” that is always there, is at number 1.
The “Information Page”, is at number 2.
The “Our Address” page, is at number 3.
And the “Products List” page is at number 4.
There are few other details that can be set per product. In this case, they are the numbers 5 to 10.

A brief explanation of the “Web tools toolbar”.
However, most of these options are self explanatory , I discuss the other ones whenever we come across them.

1. “Publish to the Web”.
2. “Web page preview”.
3. ” Insert Hyperlink”.
4. “Hotspot”
5. “Navigation bar”
6. “Rename”
7. “Background”
8. “Background sound”
9. “Form Control”
10. “Bookmark”
11. “HTML Code Fragment”
12. “Website Options”
13. “Web page options”

 Color Change

What I’m going to do first, is to change that ugly green color of certain objects so that the background color of my logo is changed. There are two ways of doing this.
You have a quick way and a time consuming way.

Let me first start with the time consuming way.
I first select the object whose color is to be changed.
I click on the downward pointing arrow next to the “Fill Color” button in the “Formatting toolbar”.
I select the “Sample fill color” option from the drop-down list, and click on the background of the logo.
This gives the object the same background color as the logo. I follow the same procedure for the second green object in my page. You need not do this again. This option is already set, so you can simply select the object, and click on “Fill Color”.
You must do this for each page.

What also needs to be changed is the color of the buttons in the “Navigation bar”.
Right-click above a button in the “Navigation bar”, and select “Format Text Box”.
In the dialog box that appears, you can specify the necessary color under the “Colors and Lines” tab in the “Colors” section. If you want to use a gradient, click the downward pointing arrow and select “Fill Effects”.
In the “Fill Effects” option, select the various colors.
Click on the OK button when you’re done.
And then click the OK button to close the “Format Text Box”.
Now we have an advantage and a disadvantage.
The advantage is that the format of this button is applied to all pages where this button is located.
The disadvantage is that we must do this for all our buttons.

Now coming to the quick way.
To change the color of all these objects, and the color of all the buttons in the “Navigation bar” a lot more quickly, and smoothly, you can use the “Change Template” button in the panel.
You can adjust the color scheme in the dialog box that appears.
We have already seen how to do all this in an earlier lesson.
In this way, all these objects and buttons are changed at a single stretch.
Remember, in the last “Change Template” dialog box, select the “Apply Template on the current publication” check box.

Deleting pages

I also delete the pages 5 to 10.
These are pages that provide a lot of explanation per product, which I do not need, at least, not in this example. The catalog page is sufficient for this example.
First, select the page numbers that are to be deleted.
To delete multiple contiguous pages, select them and keep the Shift key on your keyboard pressed.

Right-click and select “Delete Page” from the drop-down menu.

Featured Courses

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• Lesson 1: Introduction to Publisher
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