About

Web Authoring and Design is one of the required courses for the Writing and Rhetoric major or minor at George Mason University. The course is designed to help students not only learn the rhetoric of web authoring, but to experience the position of actual web designing using XHTML and CSS. This course will be highly useful in the future, especially when looking for jobs, because every company relies on technology. This course will educate you on how exactly websites work and will help you get started on learning how to author and design a website.

Before you begin: A brief look into the 5 Planes

Before beginning your site, you must become familiar with the inner workings of a site. They provide the framework on the development and design of your site. Each level is affiliated with different step when designing your site. It'll help you easily organize your thoughts when thinking about the different elements needed for a successful website.

The Strategy Plane

This first level is where you define your objective. What do you, as the founder, want to get from the site? Are you trying to sell items? Is this a personal portfolio, blog, etc? This is the level where you as the designer, make decisions on what exactly you want your site to do.

The Scope Plane

This next level is where you as the designer decide on the special features you want to include in the site. What are the features that you would like to have on the site and what would you like them to do? During this level, you want to think of the details of those features. Such as, do you want to enable users to save previously used shipping addresses or credit card information so that they will not have to shuffle around in their wallet? This level has you placing yourself in the users position and think about what you would want as a user from certain features on your site.

The Structure Plane

At this point of the site, you'd be able to define how users would get page to page. This level would define the different navigational categories that are placed on the site such as, "Contact Us" would lead to a page filled with contact information for various purposes, or the "Resources" link would lead to a page filled with various other links that lead to other resources for different purposes as well.

The Skeleton Plane

This level is considered the placement level. This is where you decide where you want to place your navigational tools, text, photos, buttons, etc. You are free to arrange these items as you please but you have to keep in mind that the arrangement will effect the efficiency of the site. You have to keep the user in mind when making these decisions.

The Surface Plane

This is the part where you're allowed to unleash your creativity onto your site. You decide on the arrangement of texts and images on a series of web pages.