Want a Web Site?

You can have a web site on the Internet if you want one. One of the few things in life that is free. Well, it can be. All you need is a PC with a webauthoring tool program. If you have an ISP (Internet Service Provider) you may get web space but if you didn't get web space with your ISP, Not to worry. There are hundreds of free web spaces all over the Internet. Look at Page17 for a link to a long list of free sites. There are even free web authering programs so by doing a little diging, you can do almost all of it free. It will be a learning curve to use the web authoring tool. Some make it easy to make a basic web page. More on the upper end of these tools is Front Page. This program will allow you to make the more sofisticated web sites. This program will also allow you to upload your pages as you construct them. Some ISPs are not configured to accept uploads from this program but that is no problem, because you can always use a free FTP program as outlined in the "FTP" page19.

If all this sounds Greek to you, this is roughly how the whole process works. The Internet is like a data phone line system that connects the whole world together. The ISPs (Internet Service Provider) are companies that connect you to this Internet and some supply space on their servers for you to store you web site and handle your e-mail. A browser (like Microsoft IE or Netscape) intrperate what is on the Internet. Meaning, they decide what color things are and how big each item is and where it is poaitioned on a page etc. When you look for something on the Internet, the browser uses a search engine to look for what you have requested. Each browser may have 5 or 6 search engines. The reason for having several search engines is that each uses a somewhat different method to look for something. Some read the title and maybe the meta tags. Meta Tags are usually just a group of key words that might be used by someone searching the Internet. This is not visible to someone viewing the site but is visible to a search engine. It is in the coding called HTML. while another looks at the wording of the first paragraph and still another reads the entire text for key words, and another may depend mainly on the info submitted to them by the web site owner. For a not so small fee, search engines will give your site some priority. Yes, as you may have already deducted that you will need to have your site registered with as many search engines as possible "IF" you want to be found by strangers. If your site is ment just for family members or a select group of people, then you don't need to register with any search engine. Thus you don't need to bother with putting in meta tags.

Any one of the web authoring programs can compleatly build a web page. However, as you progress in your skill, you will want to have several programs as each will have some different features and to use each of these feathers you will need to use more than one program. The programs like Front Page will have more features than most and will take a little more study to learn to use it. You can build a page in one program and put something in it from each of several authoring programs. Be aware too that some browsers do not recognize some features that a web authoring program installs. For example, you can make something blink like a letter or word and in one browser it will blink when viewed on the Internet. If the viewer opens the site with a different browser the word or letter may not blink.

Even if you only use the Internet on ocasions you should keep at least two different browsers. The reason for this is that there will be a time when you see an ad for a web site that you want to look at. You go log on to your ISP and open your browser, and type in the address (called a URL) into the address bar, hit "enter" and get a message on a white screen telling you that site could not be found. Bummer! First, recheck the URL you typed in to see if you have all the letters, periods, etc. Also keep in mind that when a web site is advertized on TV or in a magazine they usually just put www.whatever.com and leave the necessary prefix off. (http://) so you have to type that in also. It must be exact and be sure the case is correct also. Some programs can work with capitals or lower case leters but URLs are case senative. If you are sure you had it correct, then you are in need of a second browser. At one time I had 5 browsers but found that you can open 99% of sites with just a couple.

You should have already thought out the theme of your site before you even start. Keep in mind that if you intend for people to download info from your site, keep the site simple and very basic or add a "Text" only page. If you want anyone to download a page and you have a lot of graphics, frames and tables, they may need a cable connection to download in short of a whole day. You also want to consider what kind of PC do you think the people will have that would want to download a page from your site. There are many more people surffing the Internet with old small low powered PCs then with the new high powered cable connected PCs. Either way, the home page should be rather simple so anyone can open it. Then give them the option of high or low graphics. You can make a high graphics site that is a knock-out but you will cut the vast majority of people out from viewing it. No one is going to sit and wait 10 minutes just to open the first home page. Even many companies still use low powered PCs.

If you want some pictures on your home page or animated graphics, put them further down the page with plain text that they can be reading untill the graphics have time to load. Another aproach is to use "thumbnails". These are small pictures that can be viewed by clicking on one. In this manner you can have many pictures on a page that will load in a reasonable amount of time and give the viewer the option to view each one or just one.

The file extention of a picture will drasticly affect how big it is. (big in file size not physical size)This can be demonstrated in a graphics program by using "Save As" on a picture and apply each of the available file extentions. Then look at the size of each pic and open it to view the quality. You will quickly note which you should use. There are now programs that can even decrease the file size further without decreasing the quality much.

Check out some sites like what you want to build and note how they did in each area. Most graphics, backgrounds etc are up for grabs on the net unless otherwise noted. All you need to do is right click something you want and a pop up menu will tell you if it is ok to copy it. Be carefull downloading anything from the Internet by using anti virus software.

You can completely build a web site and save it on a floppy or on your hard drive untill you are satisfied with it and use one of the FTP programs to load it all at once. Or you can upload as you build. I usually build by each page in a site. Like this site I try to keep a subject to each page. That way if I want to upgrade or alter a subject, I can upload only that page. Keeping a page small in KB (kilabyte) size also allows a quicker opening time for those with low speed modems (a large group of potential viewers).