Getting Your Site Built

It doesn't take a genius to write a web page. Anyone can do it in only a few minutes. You don't even need special software. Any simple text editor or word processor that can save its work in text format will work. All you have to do is get your words down and put in some simple commands that indicate how you want your text displayed. That's the easy part. All the real brilliance is done by the Browser (Internet Explorer, Netscape, etc.) that interprets your document. Let's get started!

Sounds scarier than it is. It is just the language of formatting that browsers understand. It is basically formatting notes that are put within brackets. They are commands with a beginning and end, in that a command will continue to be in force until you close it.

For instance: if you say <B> you are telling the browser that you want every letter to show up in bold print until you say </B>.

The important formatting notes you should know are:

Here's how to make those wonderful blue underline links that, when clicked, whisk you away to another document. The necessary format notes are <A> and </A> (for anchor). Whatever is between these formatting notes will be the phrase that shows up in blue underline. But somewhere you have to put "where to jump to", so it would go:

<A HREF="(URL address of where you want to go)">ThisWillBeInBlue</A>.

The phrase ThisWillBeInBlue will be in blue and allow the reader to click on it to go to where you want them to go.

You can insert an image into your document easily by using the img formatting note, and referring to the file name of the image. GIF files are guaranteed to work. You can use a software program to convert PCX or BMP files to GIF. A GIF image would be formatted like this:

<IMG SRC="imagefile.gif">

You can also specify the alignment of your image with the associated line of text, using 'top', 'bottom' or 'middle'.

<IMG ALIGN="TOP"SRC="imagefile.gif">

Once you understand the basics of HTML page construction, you'll learn that there are easier ways to do this. There are commercial packages that allow you to create the page, just the way you want it to look, and then save it in "HTML Format". There are also free packages that will allow you to do the same. Microsoft makes available the Internet Assistant for recent versions of Microsoft Word for Windows. The Internet Assistant is free (you can download it on the Web) and allows you to do most of the above items directly (without knowing the commands), as well as insert photos, change the background, and add sounds. When you are finished, you save it in HTML and load it on to your Web server. Another HTML editor is the Claris Homepage, which is available for both Windows and Mac. You can get a free demo on the Web.

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