Build a Web Site that Rocks!
Getting Started
If you haven't already asked to set up http://students.engr.ncsu.edu/your-org-abbreviation yet, you are entitled to, for FREE. We'll also add your organization to our master list. Just send your request for web space to engr-webmaster@ncsu.edu with the following information.
- Name or Unity ID of organization's faculty or staff sponsor.
- Organization's full name, plus its abbreviation to be used in the URL, e.g., http://students.engr.ncsu.edu/swe.
- Unity IDs of students who need access to the space as administrators and editors.
Also read our information on Student Organization Web Sites. All Student Organizations with web space under the students.engr domain receive:
- Unlimited storage space
- PHP v5.2.0 enabled space
- 1 MySQL v5.0 Database Optional
- Access to a variety of commercial and in-house applications
- Free Web site traffic statistics
- Ability to WRAP-protect pages
- Integrated site search
Learn more about search, statistics and security, PHP MySQL, and how to test your pages at our Eos Web Services site.
*All College of Engineering Web sites operate in a LAMP environment.
Building Your Web site
There's nothing like having a web-savvy engineer in your organization who can custom build your entire site from scratch, but we realize not every organization has one of these. No need to worry. There are a variety of tools available on the web today (for FREE) that you and your organization can use to build your Web site, no matter what your experience is with HTML or PHP.
Create a Web site Using Google
Google Sites enables single-click page creation with a fully customizable look and feel. No HTML experience is required. You can even build forms (see below). Read Google's Overview.
For a real-life example, visit the new Web site for the ISPE organization. They built and embedded their Web site using Google and use their http://students.engr.ncsu.edu/ispe address.
11/17/2009 Google just added support for free templates! Read the blog post.
Build a Social Network with Ning
You can create a blog, upload photos, invite members, and post videos and events with this free social networking tool.
The Web Developers at NC State built their own network. You can too.
Create a Facebook Group
Creating a Facebook group for your student organization is a great way to stay in touch and let others know about your organization and what it is doing. The VGDC organization is on Facebook.
Other Free Design Platforms to Build Your Own Site
These online Web site creators allow you to create a full Web site in your browser without any prior knowledge of Web site development, for FREE. Many of these services also offer premium packages with additional features, for a small cost per month, if you desire additional tools.
- Wix.com offers a simple but powerful online platform to make Flash and MySpace sites.
- Webnode.com is a free interactive real-time drag-and-drop Web site builder.
- Synthasite.com allows drag-and-drop page editing with some nice image-editing features.
- Weebly.com looks and feels like Microsoft Word so it's very easy to use; you'll have a page up in no time.
Or a Combination
You may want to have some content resident in your College of Engineering space and use some of the other technologies above for collaboration, blogging, slideshows, etc.
Powering Your Content
Content Management Systems
Thinking of implementing an open-source content management system (CMS) like Joomla, Moodle, Wordpress or Drupal? Let us save you some time. Because our engineering web servers leverage some robust security measures, not all CMSs will work right out of the box. Although some users have had success implementing these in the past, it can oftentimes be a very difficult and cumbersome process to get these applications to play nice in our environment.
We recommend Drupal. It's by far the most compatible with our open base directory restriction.
- Read Wolftech's Guide for Installing Drupal on Engineering Web Servers.
- Here's pretty much everything you'll ever need to know about developing with Drupal.
News
There is an assortment of tools publicly available on the web today to help you create and publish news and announcements on your Web site. We recommend two in particular:
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Towncrier drives the news on the students.engr homepage and many other Web sites in the College of Engineering. Most of our student organizations have already created TownCrier areas at their sites for receiving news and announcements. To post news to http://students.engr.ncsu.edu/news, or another student organization site:
- Go to http://www.wolftech.ncsu.edu/towncrier/ and select Add new event.
- Select News.
- Fill in the Title and Article fields. Write carefully and please check spelling!
- Put in an End Date for when the announcement should expire.
- Select Post.
- Select the check box beside Student Orgs - Engineering Student Organizations (or another site) and click the Submit Event to Selected Areas button.
- To edit/change your article, go to My Events and select the event Name. Select Edit, change your event, and click the Change News Event Information button.
- Google's Blogger.com will let you create your own blog and give others access to publish to it. Using RSS you can import your articles and headlines directly into your students.engr Web site.
Calendar & Events
E-Council chose to create a Google Calendar and import it directly into their Web site. You can do the same, or use Towncrier to push events to your Web site calendar.
Forms
Every once in a while, you'll want to create a survey or registration form for users on your Web site to fill out. If you have enough experience, you can create one from scratch using HTML and PHP. Less experienced? You can use Google Docs to create a simple form and then embed it into your web page. It's quick and easy.
Photos & Galleries
Need help posting pictures to your Web site?
- Try out ITECS's new PackSnaps photo uploading tool.
- Create albums on Flickr or Picasa and import them into your pages.