 | |||||
|
| |||||
|
| TeenTalk! | May 2002 |
|
Everyone Was A Newbie Once by Beeb Ashcroft So you've been wanting to create your own personal website for some time now. Maybe it seemed too daunting, or you were unsure of what was involved. Whatever the case may be, this article will give you a basic guide to setting up your homepage.
Getting Started First of all, you'll need somewhere to host your site. In this article, I'll cover setting up at a free host such as Geocities or Tripod, but most of these tips apply regardless of where you set up. When you've chosen a host, you'll need to fill out a brief form and choose a login name. This often becomes part of your URL (website address) on the freebie space providers, so choose wisely! After you've signed up, you will be allocated a certain amount of space to build your homepage on. You're usually required to put something up within a few weeks, so make sure you don't leave it to rot. Building Your Page There several ways to build a page: you can use an HTML editor, which does a lot of the "grunt work" for you, a cookie cutter template, often provided by the host, or you can learn HTML. I use the first and last options; I recommend learning at least the rudiments of HTML coding, as this not only allows you to whip up pages from scratch, but also gives you more control over an HTML editor. I'll go over a few simple codes to get you started. First, log into the file manager at the site where you signed up. You'll see a file called index.html. This is the master file, the first page of your site. Select the box next to it, then click the button that says "Edit"; this will take you to a box containing HTML (this is merely so that your site will display an "under construction" message until your content is ready). If it asks you what kind of editor you want to use, choose "Advanced". Delete whatever code is already there, and type this in: <html><head><title> If you want to put your gallery of velvet Elvis paintings online; you might call it "My Velvet Elvis Gallery". Put the name of your page after <title> and after the last word, type </title>. Next, you'll want to select a background color. Since this is a page about velvet Elvis paintings, we'll make the background black and the text yellow, by typing <body bgcolor=black><font color=yellow> after </title>. A note on color names - you can either input the name, like "black", or use what are called Hex Codes, which are numbers that represent a particular color. A great source for HEX Codes is http://www.customcreate.com/freezone/colorchart2.htm. To add your first Elvis image, find or scan the picture that you want. Now you need to upload it (send it to your site) - this is done through the file manager. The upload section will contain a blank field and a browse button. Select browse, and it will bring up a box showing where files are stored on your computer. Look through the contents until you find the image (IE "filename.jpg"), then select the file. Hit OK, then upload. When the screen refreshes and shows your image name in the file manager, it's gone through successfully. Now go back to your index file and type this: <img src="filename.jpg"> Bob's your uncle - there's the pic! Making a New Page Many free hosting sites have a "Create new page" function; if yours does, use that, otherwise you can do this:
Now to link the file you just made to the homepage. Open the index file, and input this:
The "Click here" will appear on the page as underlined text, and it will take your visitor to the next page. The "Click here" is just an example - you can write whatever you like there; a description of the page might be a good idea. For example, "Visit the Gallery". To add your Email address to the main page, so visitors can contact you:
These are only basics, but it's all you need to get started. It can be frustrating at times - anything to do with computers is! - but also extremely rewarding. And, if you take it one step at a time, it needn't be too complicated. Good luck! A QUICK GUIDE TO COMMON HTML COMMANDS
Type all of these commands right before the object. After you've used a command, you'll want to turn it off by typing the same command with a slash. For example, if you write <b>Welcome to my page!, put </b> after the exclamation point, or all the text on the page will be bold. I haven't found it necessary to turn off the <p> and <br> tags, though some do. For further reading, check http://www.htmlgoodies.com. This is a huge resource with information and tutorials on everything HTML-related. |
