BUILDING A SIMPLE HOME PAGE
By Jo-Anne Head
Chairman, PC User Group SIG
ACGNJ (Amateur Computer Group of NJ)
908-769-7385
tinarock@aol.com
All home pages are constructed with html codes.
HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language.
This is a cross-platform documentation method so that
any computer equipped with a Web browser can read your document.
You mark the text with the html codes and the browser
translates them.
HTML is created in ASCII text, which every computer comes
already equipped with. If you are running Windows, you can use
Notepad to create your home page.
If you are running DOS, then you can use Edit.com to create your
home page.
HTML coding is simple. Essentially you are tagging each paragraph
in your document. Every time you hit the Return or Enter key you
are making a paragraph.
Thus, the title of your document is a paragraph.
Any heading on your document is a paragraph.
A block of text is a paragraph.
Each line of poetry in a poem is a paragraph.
Each of these paragraphs has its own html tag.
There are also tags for things such as italics or bold, if you
want several words in your document to stand out and look
different.
Then there are special tags for links to other files. These
hotlinks are what makes the Web so much fun. You can click on
a hotlink and jump from document to document, and each
document can be located on a different computer in a
totally different place. You can start out reading a home
page in New York City and the next page you read can be
in California, and the next one can be in England.
You don't notice these distances; you just click on the link and
the home page displays in front of you on the screen.
So you have your own Internet account and you have been
browsing the Web and you are wondering how to put up your own
home page on the Web. It's very simple and we'll learn
just how to make a home page.
As you go through this document, I recommend that you fire up
Notepad or Edit.com and type in the codes just as you see
them here. Then start up your Web browser, such as
Netscape, and view each version of this home page as
we build it.
Be sure to save your file as an ASCII text file with
extension .htm each time you make a change to it. This
way Netscape will "see" the new changes you are making
and you will be able to see any errors you might have
committed and fix them.
The first code we will learn is the code. All HTML
documents start out with an code. This lets the
browser know that this is an html document. At the very
end of your page, there is an code. This signals the
end of the html document.
The next code is the code. Here is where you insert the
text that you want to appear in the title bar of your home page.
The title bar is the colored bar across the top of the window.
For example,
<title>My Home Page
Notice that the tag has text following it, and it closes
with the tag. This signals that the title is complete.
Now you are ready to create the body of your home page, so it's
time for the tag. When you are completely done creating
your page, you have to put in a tag just before the
tag.
So far here's what your home page looks like:
My Home Page
You need some text, or "content", in your home page at this point.
Everyone generally starts out with a heading at this point, and
typically the heading is the same as the title. There are six
levels of headings in html, as follows:
Heading 1
Heading 2
Heading 3
Heading 4
Heading 5
Heading 6
Generally you use a Heading 1 to begin your page. Following the
conventions we have been using, your page now looks like this:
My Home Page
My Home Page
You still don't have any content, so it's time to think about
paragraphs.
After a Heading tag, there is some automatic space built in
between the Heading and the text of the paragraph that follows.
The font automatically comes down to a normal size once you have
closed your Heading tag.
HTML does not make line breaks at the end of lines. You could
type in your paragraph in a very long line without ever hitting
the Enter key, but that would make your document very hard to
read when you come back later to change it. (and you will!)
Therefore, for the reader's sake, hit the Enter key at the end
of each line.
HTML does automatic word wrap to fit the window size of the Web
browser you are using, so don't be concerned about hitting the
Enter key, it is ignored.
When you end your paragraph, you have to put in the paragraph tag.
It's very simple:
This tells the browser to leave some blank space so that it will
look like a paragraph break.
Now let's fill in some content in your sample Home Page:
My Home Page
My Home Page
Hi everyone, my name is Joe Schmoe and this is my very own Home
Page.
This is my first attempt at making my own page and I am having a
lot of fun. Since I am following directions I am not making any
mistakes.
All right now, you want to put a link in your home page to
another Web page that you think is really cool.
Start out by putting in a heading to alert your readers that you
are going to talk about another subject:
Some Cool Hot Links
Then put in some text about your links:
Here are some links I found on the Web that really turned me on.
Now it's time to put in the links. What you are doing is
inserting the URL to another place on the Web. What's a URL?
That's the Uniform Resource Locator, or in other words, the
address to the site on the Web. Other Web pages often start
out with the http:// format, which makes them easy to recognize.
Files that you can download start out with ftp:// or with file://,
depending on where the file is located.
The easiest way to insert a link to another Web page is to
use Windows' cut and paste, so highlight the link that you like
by dragging your mouse across the text so it changes color,
and then use Edit/Copy, then go to your home page document
and use Edit/Paste to put in the link correctly. Be sure to
include some description of the link so that the reader gets
an idea of what is found on that Web site.
Our home page now looks like this:
My Home Page
My Home Page
Hi everyone, my name is Joe Schmoe and this is my very own Home
Page.
This is my first attempt at making my own page and I am having a
lot of fun. Since I am following directions I am not making any
mistakes.
Some Cool Hot Links
Here are some links I found on the Web that really turned me on.
Click here to get to the
Electric
PostCard and send a postcard to your friends on the Web
for free.
Want to color some pages in?
Click here to
get to Carlos' Coloring Book.
Notice the link starts out with and ends
with . This is just another html tag and works the same
way as
and .
The only tricky part is getting the http:// address exactly
correct, and if you use Windows cut and paste as I mentioned
already, you will avoid the typo problem.
Remember that all of the text found between the opening tag
and the closing tag will be included in the underlined/colored
hotlink that you can click on to jump to another site.
Now you have a simple home page. Maybe you'd like to jazz it up
a bit. So let's add BLINK to the home page. The