HTML editors have a very handy feature that allows you to preview the page as
you're working, so I recommend clicking on that preview button often! This will
show you how the page would look on the Web.
Once you've gotten your
feet wet with HTML, you can begin to add other things to your practice web pages,
like graphics, buttons, backgrounds, etc. Keep in mind that overloading your site
with those wonderfully cute graphics only makes the page load that much slower.
Visit How to Lose Your Web Viewers and learn that for every 10 seconds
it takes for your graphics to load before your page contents can be seen, you
risk losing 20 percent of your remaining viewers. http://www.delphi.com/pubweb/gg2.html
An excellent spot to look for graphics is The Clip Art Connection, where
the graphics are divided into categories and themes, which makes it much easier
to find what you want. http://www.ist.net/clipart/themespc.html When building
your site, save the main page (home page) as "index.html."
From there,
name your other pages based on their content. Be sure to provide a link from your
main page to each of the other pages. You have your beginning site, so now you
need to actually put your masterpiece on the Web for the world to see.
Many service providers offer free website space as part of their monthly service.
Check with your Internet service provider to see if they provide free space and
exactly what you need to do to upload your site.
If your service provider
doesn't offer free space, check with Geocities. Geocities even provides a File
Manager Utility program for creating a website. http://www.geocities.com/
After you learn the procedures for uploading your site to the Web, you'll
need a good FTP program to upload the pages. Back at Stroud's, search for CuteFTP,
which is one of the best File Transfer Protocol clients available on the market.
http://cws.internet.com/32ftp.html#cuteftp
Hopefully, this will get
you off and running with your own website. Of course, when building a site, there
are many other considerations that you will want to address later, such as the
importance of META tags, how to add CGI scripts for guestbooks/counters, how to
use frames and tables, and much more.
But all of that comes with experience
(and, in my case, the help of a few very good friends!). We'll close with an article
titled, How to Publicize a Website by Richard Seltzer, which outlines ways to
promote your site. http://www.samizdat.com/public.html
Robin
Nobles is a freelance writer whose articles on surfing the Web are published in
six newspapers regularly. She also writes articles about the Web and Internet
in publications such as Internet Newsroom, InfoAlert, WebVantage, CompuNotes,
ChipNET, The Sunshine Post, Bridges Initiatives, and more. She can be reached
at robin@robinsnest.com or through her website: Robin's Nest for Writers and Web
Surfers - http://www.robinsnest.com/
