Winning Web Sites

Jeffrey Moon is head of the Documents Reference/Data Centre at Queen’s
University.

This nontechnical guide to planning and implementing a business Web site
is purposely devoid of any HTML code. Computer jargon is limited to the
26 terms defined in the book’s glossary. Aside from a minimum of
prose, the book consists of a series of copyrighted Web-planning
templates. There are pre-planners, budget planners, content planners,
and planning maps. In addition, there are ID, combo, detail, table,
form, zoom, and link page templates.

There are terse instructions on how the myriad of templates should be
filled out and fit together to achieve the desired Web outcome. What
underlies this exercise is a company, Fleet House Information Management
Solutions, which is owned by the author. Purchasers of this book are
encouraged to make use of Fleet House Web-authoring services; the book
price is refunded to those who do so. Curious about the existence of a
Fleet House Web site, I “divined” the URL
“www.fleethouse.com”—and came up empty. I searched for Fleet House
using a number of search engines and eventually found “www.
fleethouse.com/fh-serv.htm.” Web-authoring and support services were
featured prominently on this and related Fleet House pages, with no
mention of Winning Web Sites. Unfortunately, the “home” button on
these pages, which points to the originally attempted URL, did not work;
this was not encouraging.

The book is rather daunting. The Web-planning process seems
unnecessarily detailed and complex. The templates seem tailored more to
the Fleet House production process than to the needs of a Web neophyte.
Alternatives exist. Simple Web-based templates that walk users through
basic Web site design are available, as are other Web site design books.
Winning Web Sites is recommended only for those who are determined to
use Fleet House services.