This web page would not exist at all if Merle Hirsh from Plasma Resources hadn't asked me what I knew about HTML.
"HTML is the language used to write web pages." I responded.
"Is that all you know about HTML?" he asked.
"Yes, why?"
"I was looking for someone to fix the links on my webpage. You're probably the wrong person for the job."
"Yes, probably." I responded. A few days later, I asked for his webpage disks and started to learn about web page authoring.
The first step was to find what software I needed to do the job. MS Word came pre-installed on my computer. At first I was thrilled that the webpages that I had been given opened up nicely. I could even view the code.
Everything started getting more and more messed up as I worked on the webpages. What I needed was a HTML editor that could correct the HTML code.
So I started by searching through my favorite freeware links, downloaded, installed, and un-installed a lot of likely sounding programs.
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Three evenings later, I settled on the software. This is the cream off the top. |
(I realize that they don't even make milk like they use to, so if I lost you: The best software is listed here.)
Although I had all the right software, the links that I was trying to fix, still did not work. Here are the websites that I found useful:
HTML Tutorials for the Complete Idiot By Jeff Walters web page answered my questions about links.
HTML Primer: HTML Tutorial and Resources introduced me to HTML validators, Meta Tags, and JavaScript.
How Stuff Works explains how web pages work, how web servers work, how CGI scripts work, and more.
Tutorials start out with the basics and work their way to more complicated web authoring tricks. Has a good clip art section if you are looking for
bars or banners. He has sound effects, webtools, guest articles and more.
Beginning HTML at htlmgoodies.com has excellent information. They start out with the basics and move on to tricks with graphics, backgrounds, JavaScript, and more.
has some neat info on how to change the attributes of a horizontal line and some useful info on making complicated tables.
The HTML Webring has many good sites for more help with HTML
Cascading style sheets puts the information your computer needs so that you can see different colored, and sized text before your computer reads the content of what you wrote. The advantage of using Cascading Style Sheets is that your pages load faster. Evrsoft's converter does a nice job upgrading the font elements of your script to CSS.
Dynamic Design has an excellent W3C HTML valid tutorial in HTML and CSS.
Be careful. Netscape 4 and older is not compatible with cascading style sheet code because you just defined you element in so that a Unix based computer can read your code. Netscape respects the rules once you tell Netscape what the rules are. If you use it with a JavaScript button on the same page, the object made with Java comes out larger than one would think. If your page is hyper-linked, like my Aaaagh It's Not Working page, the internal links will not work at all after upgrading to style sheets.
There are other things you can do to speed up the loading of your website. Defining image size, using tables, and using the same graphic in different places are some of them.
To check my html coding I used an online validator.
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Writing a website is the same as writing in any other format. You write, proof read, edit, and write some more. |
After I got the links working, I wondered if anyone ever looked at the website. I put a counter on the bottom of the page. By the way, when you see a counter that you like on a web page click on it. Many times you will see the information that counter has collected for the web page that you were looking at. Other times the counter is a link to the people who made the counter. The counter told me no one ever looked at the web page.
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Marketing Your Web Site Page is worth looking at once you have written and posted your web pages, and finally have the makings of your own web site. |
As I researched website marketing I learned about meta tags. Meta tags do more than just help search engines find out about your site. On my home page I have two meta tags telling people looking for websites that are safe for kids that my site is indeed safe for kids. Some HTML editors generate a meta tag that says you used their software to create your webpage.
After I got everything working I wondered how all those cool effects are done on other websites. CGI scripts are not all that compatible with Unix. Freewebsites.com the first place I posted my website, is a Unix based server. Only some CGI scripts will work on a Unix based server. Evrsoft bundled JavaScripts with its html editor. That was enough to get me started.
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Smatterings: JavaScript Page shows some of the neat things JavaScript can do for you. |
My friend Eric looked at my web site and said, "What about pictures? How come there's only one? Where was that picture?"
"It's on the theater page. Why is the picture so important?" I looked at Eric blankly.
"I want to click on it."
"You what?" I gasped. "Why?"
"I want to see what it's linked to."
"It's not linked to anything. It's just a picture." The photograph on the theater page is now linked to a description of the picture.
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I only have one picture that I made, and that picture does not go with anything that I have written about. I started a long search for suitable illustrations. |
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How you design your website depends on you and what you want to portray. Here are some tips and things to consider before you get to far into your web project and decide you should have done it a different way and revamp everything. |
As I surfed the web, I came across more and more websites that I liked that contained music, that did not crash my browser.
Here are some links, some the problems I had, and what I did to resolve them.
