This page is the first lesson in a series of three lessons that help you create and install your home page.
In this tutorial, we are going to set up a very simple page to start with. This home page will include a title, a header, some text, and your email address.
Here is the template for the home page you will be creating. You need to copy this to your computer or host for editing.
If you're using Netscape, pull down the File menu and select "Save as..." after you've clicked on the template to display the HTML on your screen.
To download the template using Mosaic, you will need to first choose the "Load to Disk" option from the "Options" pull-down menu, and then click on the template to transfer the template to your local disk.
If you are using Lynx, select the template, hit enter, and after it is displayed on your screen, hit the "p" (for print) key and select "Save to local file" to transfer the file to your local machine.
Editing the Template
This file may be loaded or pasted into any type of word processor that has the ability to save documents in plain text format. In MS Windows, the Notepad is a good choice. On a Mac, use "Teach Text". In UNIX, use the editor of your choice (for the pico text editor (type "pico" at the UNIX prompt), or if you're a real geek or a masochist, try "vi").Check for this ability by going to the "Save As" menu in your word processor and choosing the option most similar to "Save File as Type:". If one of the options says "ASCII" or "Text (*.txt)", then you can use this program. If you cannot figure out how to do this using the program you have selected, choose another one. Don't add any formatting such as fonts or font styles to the HTML document you are creating, since this will be discarded when the file is saved as plain text (ASCII).
Click here to see an example of what your home page will look like.
A Basic Page
The template has a standard header and footer. Don't worry about what they mean at this point, just know that you should have them in all your pages in order to maximize the number of browsers that can read your page.The instructions below are italicized to help distinguish them from the text of the template itself.
Select a title, and replace "Your Title Here" in the template with it. Titles generally refer to whatever the page is about, such as "Bob's Page" or "Acme Nuts and Bolts". They are also used by a number of services which index sites on the WWW. The Title is not usually displayed on the Web page itself, but rather in the caption of the browser application's window, or on a special line above the page in the browser window labled Title: The large letters at the start of each web page are actually headings.
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Acme Nuts and Bolts</TITLE>
<!-- Comment: will not show up when broswer looks at page. Simple Example Home Page for WebCom "Getting Your Home Page on the Web" Tutorial -->
</HEAD>
<BODY>
The body section of your page, where all your headings, text, graphics and hotlinks to other resources go, follows this tag.
First, you will need to decide on a top level heading for your page. A company name, or the central topic of the page are a couple of ideas:
<H1>Welcome to Acme Nuts and Bolts</H1>
Insert the heading of your choice into the template, where it says "Your Heading Here".
Insert a couple of paragraphs. Each paragraph should start with a paragraph start tag (<P>), and end with a paragraph end tag (</P>). This not only tells the browser to create paragraph breaks, but also allows software not concerned about the display of the text, but rather with its informational content (such as indexing software), to identify the logical role of a piece of text within the document (in this case a paragraph).
Here you can find the latest information about available products, pricing information, and information about our retail distributors program.
<P>
Acme Nuts and Bolts is committed to producing the highest quality nuts, bolts, and screws available. You'll never get a loose screw or a flaky nut from us.
</P>
Now, sign your page and put a horizontal rule on it. If the information is time sensitive, add a date to it, so people will know how current the information is.
<HR>
John Doe, (johndoe@acme.com)
</BODY>
</HTML>
Now, save your file. If you have been using a word processor instead of a text editor, then you will have to go to the "Save As" menu and choose "ASCII" or "Text (*.txt)" from the option most closely resembling "Save File as Type:" or "Format:". You did check to see that your word processor could do that, right? If you can't figure out how to do this, you may be able to copy the text from your word processor into another program where this can be done.
Once you have done this, click here to find out how to install your home page.
[an error occurred while processing this directive]