Progress Report: Putting WAF on the Web

For my term project, I have proposed designing an informative hypertext/simple website for the World Affairs Forum (WAF) at Seton Hill.  I'm a member of WAF and we're a small campus organization without much recognition, so I thought the idea would be a good fit for this project.

I've determined my target audience: SHU freshman and sophomore students who have yet to get involved with any extra-curricular activities.  However, the site will be designed and written in a tone appropriate for SHU faculty as well.   

Thus far in my planning I've sketched out a basic layout for my site.  I want to have a homepage, obviously, with clear organization and navigation.  On the home page, I want to include the WAF logo (probably in the upper left-hand corner of the page) with a clear tag line that will describe the group and the purpose of the site.  I also want to include elements of design associated with SHU, like the SHU logo (see below).  Because WAF is so new and not very well-known, the homepage will probably be greatly dedicated to conveying the main point of the WAF (think Krug). As part of this, I will incorporate the WAF mission and motto...but in a creative way, since mission statements are usually something web users skip over.

As for internal pages, I want to have a page for: fall 2008 events, spring 2009 events, WAF members, and sister organizations.  The "events" pages will list and describe all of our previous and future events, the "members" page will provide brief bios of the student and faculty members in WAF, possibly with pictures, and their contact information.  The "sister organizations" page will link to groups outside of WAF that have helped us develop events or have co-sponsored events. This includes, but is not limited to, City Asylum Pittsburgh and the SHU Alumni Relations.

As part of my design, I've e-mailed Phil Komarny to see if I can use the SHU website style sheet in my design.  Practically, if this site were ever uploaded for public use, it would be linked from somewhere within the SHU homepage.  I also e-mailed around to see what it would take to get the page uploaded as an actual part of the SHU page, and I discovered that I'll have to submit it to the SHU web committee for approval.

If anyone has any comments or suggests for my site, please let me know!  I also have some specific questions about my project so far:

1.  How can I keep the proportions of my site the same, so it appears the same on every monitor?  In other words, I don't want my "margins" or "padding" dimensions to be based on each individual monitor.  Is it possible to keep them the same?

2.  In my navigation bar, I want to list "Events" and then have "fall 2008 events" and "Spring 2009 events" appear as subheadings after the user has clicked "events."  How can I do this?

If anyone has the answers to these questions...or can show me someplace where I can find the answers...it'd be greatly appreciated!