Continued from Page 1
Step 2: Site contents
Now that you have your site ready, you’ll need to create the
contents for your site. For this, you’ll need an HTML editor. An HTML
editor is basically a helper program that lets you manipulate code. If you’re
very familiar with HTML, you could use a text editor like Notepad but then
you would know enough not to need this article. Otherwise, you could make
use of WYSIWYG editors. These editors generally hide the code from you and
make creating HTML documents as easy as creating word processing documents.
However, they don’t allow you to do everything under the sun. Most of the
free Web services like Geocities offer such site-building tools. You could
make use of these or you could use packages like Dreamweaver or FrontPage.
Where do you get an HTML
editor? If you have installed Netscape, then you have got Netscape Page
Composer, which you can access from the Communicator menu. If you have
Internet Explorer, then you get FrontPage Express along with it. The PCQ CD
has regularly carried shareware or demo versions of HTML editors like
Dreamweaver.
You don’t need to be a
crack designer to have a good Website up. The trick is to keep it simple—don’t
use too many or garish colors. Similarly, don’t use too many different
fonts and font sizes, and effects like blinking text or bold text should be
kept minimal, if used at all.
While designing your site,
take care of the following:
a) Give your site an
informative title
b) Don’t overload your
site with a lot of graphics, as Websites with a lot of graphics take a
long time to load
c) Don’t put everything
you have on one page. Make multiple pages and provide links so that
visitors can easily move from page to page.
d) Provide your e-mail
address in a hypertext or graphical link. This will enable people to get
back to you with comments and suggestions.
Step 3: Upload your site
After creating the contents, you’ll need an FTP program to upload your
site. FTP stands for file transfer protocol and is a way of transferring
files to and from computers on the Internet. An FTP client program (FTP
client) sends a request to an FTP server program (FTP server) asking to
exchange information and transfer files. The server then verifies that the
user is authorized to send or receive files and responds to the request
accordingly.
Numerous graphical FTP client
software packages are available as freeware or shareware. One of the best
clients available on the Internet is WS_FTP. You can download it from
www.tucows.com or www.ftppro.com. It’s also available on many PCQ CDs.
Here’s how you can use FTP
to upload HTML files from your hard disk to your site.
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