Setting Up

Setting up the site

When publisher loads go to the "blank document tab" and select blank web page.

On the File menu choose Page Setup, select "wide".

Setting up the background

In publisher the "background" contains elements that appear on all pages. Other DTP packages refer to the background page as the master page. On the View menu choose Go to background.

The title of the site can go here at the top. You should also create a grid to allow you to line up elements on more complex pages. Go to the Arrange menu and choose Layout Guides. I like to use a 4 column layout with 10 rows for vertical alignment.

Remember these are just guides. You don't have to stick with them.

The advantages of four columns is that the left hand column is just right for a navigation bar.

We will put in a navigation bar now just to see what it will look like, but the chances are that adding/removing pages will mess it up a bit and you will probably need to delete and re-insert it later (Publisher 2000 is cleverer than Publisher98 in this regard).

Go to the Insert menu and select Design Gallery Object, choose to insert a web navigation bar. Place it in the left most column.

As you create pages you will be able to add them to this navigation bar.

At this point you may wish to set a colour scheme, using the Format menu choose Colour and Background Scheme. From here you can select a colour scheme and set a background colour or texture.

Rather understated colours and textures work best.

Finally (though you don't need to be on the background page for this) create some text styles. You can do this by using Format and Text Style, from here you can create new styles for e.g. main headings, sub-headings, normal text etc. Be careful in choosing fonts. Your readers may not have the same fonts available so stick to basic fonts (Arial, Times Roman) as these will either be directly supported or have close substitutes.

You will see that there is an option to import styles from an existing publisher document. This saves a lot of time in that it makes setting up your styles a one-off.

Having set up your background you will want to start creating your content. On the View menu choose Go to page.