Website Building
| Building a Web Site. You may have thought that this is a thing that is beyond you, and only professionals can do, but you are wrong. Building a webpage is easy and depends more on flare and design, than on technical skill. | Steps
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Design,
is the first step. What do you want on your site, and how do you want it to
look. Think of it as walking into a building. You walk into the lobby and
there are several doors that you can take, each room in turn may lead
to another set of doors, and you will always want to be able to get back
to the lobby.  Draw this out on paper, using a sheet for each page, and lay
them out like a family tree. Each page on the web will be suffixed with htm as
this is the type of file format.
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| Build,
your pages using a package. There are various proprietary packages on the
market. I use MS-FrontPage, there are others as can be seen, and
you can also use word
processing packages such as MS-Word 97 which supports HTML code.
Create each page separately, then put links onto the page to other pages on your website, or to other websites that you have visited and would like others to visit. It is best to create a folder for the web site on your computer and then keep all the files together in it, including any graphical image files. Remember that a Web Page is visual, and think of how it is going to look to the visitor. Too many pictures will slow it down when loading and the visitor may decide to go elsewhere before it has finished downloading to their PC, so your first page, which is called 'index.htm', should be kept to a minimum, but should get their attention. Too many animations and your site will look gimmicky, so try to keep it professional. Do not clutter your pages, but instead add extra pages. |
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| Test It, before you publish it. Some of the packages have a preview facility. The best way is to use the Internet Explorer on your PC. In Windows Explorer double click the index.htm file and you will be able to view your site as it will look on the Internet and also test out your links to other pages on your site. | Tip
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 Publishing
the pages is not difficult. To do this you will need an FTP
program that can transfer the pages onto the Web. The one I used FTP Explorer, and
also Terrapin, there are undoubtedly many more. You
will also need some details from your Internet Service Provider (ISP)
about where the files are to be deposited. This information should be some
where on the home page of the ISP, possibly in the help section. |
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Uploading. Once you have your FTP program and the relevant settings in place, you have to follow the instructions for the package and copy (upload) the files onto your web space on the Internet. This should be quite simple. On the FTP Explorer, I click the Blue Upload Arrow and then select the files to upload, then click on OK and watch them transfer. At this point you have done it and you should be able to type in you Web Page Name in your Internet explorer and see the results. |
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Domain Name Registration. If you want your site to look professional when others find it using a search engine, then think about registering your own domain name. Instead of www.squibby.freeserve.co.uk they will find www.classicbikes.org.uk see what I mean. The company I have used is EASILY will register a name for a small fee (from £10 for 2 years) and you can then point the name at your own site. It is especially good for clubs as they can have up to 20 email addresses which point at the members own email addresses. cedric@classicbikes.org.uk points to cedric@squibby.freeserve.co.uk I have used StreamlineNet for website hosting.
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Search Engines. If you want others to be able to find your site you need to submit your Website Name (URL) to the search engine. This can be done individually (see the search engine site for details) or you can submit to a group using a submit site.
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Hints
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Meta Tags. Taken from the Greek word Meta meaning After, these are bits of code which can be added to your web page. You can use them to specify your Key Search Words, Page details, Site name, etc. Click here for more details. |
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Hit Counters. Every one wants a hit counter, so that they can see how many people have visited their site. There are many on the Web and some ISP's allow you to use the one included in your software package. For example, some support is given to FrontPage Extensions. The one I use is available on the Internet and gives good statistics as well, so that I can see where in the world people are finding my site, and at what times of the day, etc. Click here for details. |
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Guest
Book. It is good to get feed back from others, as they can see
the page in perspective. One way to do this other than email, is to put a
guest book on your site. There are numerous available free on the
internet, one being 
GuestOne, who also provide other useful services. Obviously if you allow
someone to post directly to a guest book you can end up with all manner of
unwanted bad language or links to undesirable sites, such as porn. One way
around this is to set up a page on your own site to house the comments and
then use a form to email the comments. You then decide what goes onto the
page before it is published. In my opinion this sort of censorship should
not be used to remove constructive comment or criticism, just the
offensive. |
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| Javascript.
When it comes to adding frill's to your site, javascript may provide some
answers. I have added a Tip of the day to my site using code which was
provided free on the web. It is not difficult to use and you will find it can
provide all sorts of functionality.
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Finally.
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This book is a must, if you are using FrontPage 2000 or any other version. The structured layout means that you can quickly find what you need. Full of useful examples and colour slides to help you develop your site to it's full potential. £13-99 Published by Osborne |
An excellent book costing £11-99, which is very easy to follow with lots of good examples and links to useful sites. If you just want to understand the code or even write pages using code, this book will give you a good start and goes into some depth Published by Made
Simple Books |
A useful Webpages to find other help IT Learning Materials & Webopedia
Domain Name & Website Hosting 
Need a new PC or Components 
Down Load Internet Browsers 
