The SAU school districts are committed to working together to achieve common standards and values that will result in graduates who are caring, productive, and contributing members of society.

Teacher/Staff RWD Websites

Rapid Web Designer (RWD) is an enhancement to the FirstClass communications and e-mail system that allows teachers to have a website on a template that makes their pages look like their school website and use the native features of FirstClass.

RWD Request/Setup/Training

To request an RWD website, please contact your tech. coordinator.

We highly recommend you schedule training with your school's technology coordinator before you try to use RWD. One of our trainers will show you how simple it is to get going with RWD to create a site.

A User's Training Guide is available and some users prefer to work through this guide on their own. It takes about 4 hours but can be done in sections. We recommend all RWD users review the Training Guide in its entirety so you understand:

what is required to use RWD
Your Home Page
Links & Navigation
Formatting Text and using Fonts
Using Pictures/Graphics - Size
Using Tables

The User's Training Guide is just an initial introduction to the capabilities and workings of RWD and it contains many tips and pointers to working successfully with this tool.

Please review the Teacher/Staff Website Rules.

We recommend you work through the training guide to understand RWD. Please contact your tech. coordinator or Kathy Weise at the SAU offices for a copy of the training manual.

Top

RWD Access

Client 8+ is required for RWD to work properly. To determine your client version, from any FirstClass window, do a Help menu --> About FirstClass Client and view the version number. Contact your school's tech. coordinator if your client needs an upgrade or follow the Client Install instructions here.

Once you have been notified that you are setup for RWD, you should see two new icons on your FirstClass desktop. If you are scheduled for training, please do not use these icons until you attend training. One icon is labelled "RWD Builders" and one icon is labelled with your school abbreviation and your name. If you do not see both icons, contact tech. support. (make sure you arrange your icons so you can see them all - occasionally they will sit on top of each other and you don't see them).

We recommend you work through the training guide to understand RWD.

There is a special command file that must be run on each machine that you want to work on your RWD website. You learn about this in training. It is called "RWD_Basic.fc". If you plan to work on your site at home, you must have the FirstClass client and run this special command file on that computer.

Top

Browser access to your RWD website

Once you work on your website, you will want to view it from a web browser, i.e. Internet Explorer, Firefox, Mozilla, etc. so you can see it as your students and parents will see it. To access your site, the address is:

http://XXXRW.sau16.org/Teachers/XXX_first_last

Example:
http://ehsrw.sau16.org/Teachers/EHS_Richard_Pratt

Top

Website Template/Home Page

When your website is first created, it has several basic elements to it:

Home Page
Homework Page
Downloads Folder
Class Calendar

DO NOT RENAME "Home Page"! The website software automatically knows to default to your Home Page only if it has that name.

You are welcome to change the wording on the pages - we just put something there to get you started. You are also welcome to add and delete pages - if you do not want a calendar or downloads folder, feel free to remove that link from your pages. It is recommended that you attempt to maintain the same set of links on the left Navigation Links on all pages to make it easiest for users to navigate your site. Copying an existing page is the simplest way of doing this - then you do not need to recreate all the links each time (see instructions below to copy a page).

You can add pages and links to your site as you see fit. Please keep in mind the SAU 16 Teacher/Staff website rules.

Top

Copy Pages

One of the easiest ways to create additional pages is to copy a page within your website. This is helpful if you’ve created navigation links already that you want to be similar - find a similar page and copy it. RWD has a certain set of keystrokes required to copy a page, and it's a little different than usual copies so it can be confusing at first.

Make sure the page you are copying has a Subject - if not, open it and enter one
Click in white space so nothing is selected
Press and hold the CTRL key
Highlight the page name you want to copy
Then drag and drop the page to the bottom of the window
See new page listed

It will say "Copy:" in the subject of the new page. It is important to immediately rename the new copy. To rename it, open it, type a new Page Name and Subject and close it. FirstClass allows multiple pages with the same names but it will access the OLDEST file and be very confusing.

(Note - You do not want to highlight the page name first and then <CTRL>, drag and drop, which is different from usual computer copies. Select nothing, press and hold CTRL, select, drag and drop).

Top

RWD Tips

If the information in the header section of the page is greyed out, you need to run the RWD Builders icon on that computer.
Use the mouse to move the separator between the header info. and the text info on your page to give you more space to work
Header Title (and/or subtitle) on second tab of page contains the page header that appears in print at the top of the web page
Changes are immediate once a page is closed or the Save Icon on top right of text area is pressed. There’s no publish step. There’s also limited “Undo” capabilities so be careful. Copy page first as a backup.
“Home Page” is the default page name for a directory/conference. Do not change page names once your site is setup or your links won’t work.
Resize pictures (in a graphics program like Irfanview) before you insert them into your web page. Resizing them on the page does not reduce the file size – only the appearance. A handy trick is to insert them, then open it, resize it and copy and paste it back into the page (see detailed directions below).
If text is getting chopped off of right side of page, open page, highlight all the text, and pull the margins in a little. Save the page and check from a browser.
Don’t use fancy fonts – stick with Verdana, Arial, Times New Roman, or Comic Sans. Other fonts will not display reliably.
Check your work in a browser regularly. Must refresh page (F5) to view changes.

Graphics

It is important to post pictures and graphics on your website in an efficient "internet-friendly" size. This is getting more important for people to understand, especially as digital cameras are providing larger files (more pixels). You can resize a picture to display on your web page smaller but this is not the correct way to do it because the file size is still very large and it just displays smaller. You should use a graphics program to resize your pictures to a more appropriate file size - 400 pixels x 400 pixels is a good recommendation to start.

Handy way to resize Graphics Files when using RWD

Insert your picture into your RWD page – either using the Insert dropdown --> Image/File or by pasting (CTRL-V) the picture that you copied to the clipboard
Double-click on the picture
Click the <open> button in the Format Image window
Resize that window with the picture using the corner until the picture appears the size you want it
From the picture window, Edit (menu) --> Copy
Return to your RWD page, put the mouse pointer where you want the picture and paste it there (Edit menu --> paste or CTRL-V). You can paste it over the highlighted original large picture, thereby replacing the large graphic with the resized graphic.

Free Graphics Program Options

Microsoft Photo Editor can resize (comes on Windows XP) or you can download a free program called Irfanview to help you with this task:

Software Website: http://www.irfanview.com

Quick Directions - list of quick instructions handy to learn program

The RWD User's Training Guide has good explanations of using pictures in your RWD website (section 5 - page 35).

Top

Page Headings / Identifiers

It is somewhat confusing to new users what fields effect the layout and workings of their web pages. These fields should be changed on every new page:

Page Tab / Page Name: This is the name of the page file. Used in any link to this page. Not changed until form saved/closed. This defaults to "Rapid Web Designer" for new pages - YOU MUST CHANGE for it to work properly.
Page Tab / Subject: This is the webpage "Title" (and stored in <TITLE> of HTML code on web page). Search engines use this text to index your webpage. It appears in the title bar of your browser window. It also appears in your website conference window under the Subject column.
Header Tab / Title (and Subtitle): This is the title that you want to appear at the top of your page. It defaults to "Type in your page title here" which you obviously don't want to display on the top of your page.

Top

Teacher/Staff RWD Websites

Other Links