If you've visited lots of homepages and want one yourself, you'll be pleased to know that getting on the Web is reasonably straightforward. It doesn't matter whether your site is to be a commercial or a private one, the process you go through to achieve your final result will largely be the same. That said, if you are promoting your business and want a really professional-looking site, you might want to consider contacting a professional web-authoring service.
0 If it's to be a DIY job, your first step should be to consider what it is you want the world to see. You may wish to advertise your products, have a shrine to your favourite pop star or TV series or publicise a worthy cause. Whatever it is, it is best to start by writing out the basic text you want to include. It's important that you save the file as plain ASCII text, so avoid using any special characters that aren't displayed on your keyboard, as well as smart quotes, the £ sign or the use of tabs to line up text.
Once the text is written, you should consider including a few pictures or graphics to make the pages visually more interesting. It is worth bearing in mind that the only picture formats web browsers can read are GIF and JPG and remember that you can't use other people's images without their permission.
Personal pictures will need to be scanned. If you don't have access to a colour scanner, other options are to check computer magazines where scanning services are advertised; or if you have a CD-ROM drive, most good photo processing outlets offer the option of putting pictures onto Photo CD for you. Using a program like Paint Shop Pro, you can convert the picture format to GIF or JPG.
At most, images should be no more than 256 (or better still 16) colours, since anything more would be lost on most visitors. Ensure that no image exceeds 450 pixels across since the resolution on many monitors can't cope with anything larger. Images displayed as part of the page should be below 30k and ideally, half that - as bigger images slow the download process for visitors to your site. If you can't avoid using large images, introduce them on the page as thumbnails (about 150 pixels across and up to 10k in size) with a link to the full version.
When it comes to designing the layout of your pages, keep the first page fairly simple. An introduction to what's on your site, pointers to your other pages, plus pointers to your own favourite WWW sites should be enough.
In subsequent pages, try to avoid large blocks of unbroken text - typical visitors to your site will be browsing and you need to capture and hold their interest. Present information in steps of increasing detail and break up the text with graphics. Make use of headings throughout, and include a linked list of them at the top of the page, thus providing the visitor with an immediate overview of the document. For more ideas, try looking at the page layout of your favourite magazines or web sites.
Most browsers allow you to save the source file of any web page you're viewing, so you can see how the author has created the page. What you will see is a combination of text and HyperText Mark-up Language (HTML). Its function is to tell the browser how to display the page. When creating a document, you'll need to place mark-up tags throughout the text to act as formatting instructions to the browser.
HTML also allows you to create links to other points in your document, to other documents on your site, or even to other remote sites and allows you to include graphics, video or sound in your documents.
Your pages don't need to be linear; you can cross-reference to other parts of your site using hyperlinks, so that readers can 'jump' from one part to another if they want. Think of it as a root structure, with the index page at the top.
It's usually a good idea to draw the structure out on paper, to work out what should link to what. When creating long pages, it's helpful to the reader if you provide links such as return to top/contents/homepage, at appropriate points, so they don't run into a dead end.
There are three ways to add HTML tags to your text. A straightforward approach to formatting text is to use Microsoft's Internet Assistant for Word. Documents can be laid out with headings, bullet points, pictures, etc., just like any word-processed file and then saved in HTML format. The software will automatically add all the tags for you. Links can be added with the button bar.
A second option is to use an HTML editor; this software typically makes use of button bars or menus for embedding the most common tags. Unlike the Internet Assistant, you can't clearly see how your pages are shaping up, so you'll need to have your Web browser loaded so that you can regularly view your pages during the formatting process.
The final option would involve you using a plain text editor like Notepad, or a word processor (although in the case of the latter, you must ensure you don't add any illegal characters) and inserting all the tags yourself. Obviously you'd need a basic grasp of HTML before attempting to do this. While this approach can be quite time-consuming, it does give you total control.
Whichever option you go for, it's a good idea to run your pages through an HTML-checker to detect any syntactical errors you may have made - this is especially important with programs like Internet Assistant where you've had no control over the HTML input and they don't always get it right first time. Some browsers have HTML-checkers built in.
You should bear in mind that some people will be viewing your pages with text-only browsers, or with the images option disabled. This latter group work in this way to ensure a much faster download time (even a small image is the equivalent to several pages of text). HTML includes an alternative text tag for images, which is the text that is displayed if the image isn't, and you should get into the habit of using this.
There are a number of new tags which have been created by Netscape and Microsoft such as scrolling text and certain text alignments that aren't recognised by all browsers. While statistics suggest that Netscape is favoured by the majority of web-users, not all will have the latest version that recognises the newer tags. Many people are still using Netscape 1.0, which doesn't handle background colours and tables.
It is best to try to avoid these tags altogether where possible, unless you are certain that even on other browsers, the format of your pages isn't ruined. If you really need to line things up into columns and don't have two sets of pages, use the preformatted text command that renders text as fixed font and as entered. Even though your pages may look fine on your own browser, try viewing them on Netscape 1.0, 1.1 and Mosaic to make certain.
If you are going to add a coloured or patterned background, don't choose something so bold that it puts visitors off, or colours that make hyperlinks difficult to see. Don't rely on colour as the main impact of your pages, as those who can't see it, or who have the Show Images feature disabled, may be faced with a rather boring page.
Once you've designed your homepage, you'll need to think about how to get yourself web space. Demon Web Service offer anything from 5-100Mb of space, with prices starting at £25.00 per month, plus a one-off set-up fee of £50.00 (excluding VAT).
If you think the minimum 5Mb is too much for your needs, Demon is quite happy for you to resell space on your site, with the one proviso that you take responsibility for administering the site and must therefore handle all the uploading and installation of other users' files yourself. To keep the site secure, under no circumstances should you reveal your password to any of your customers.
You will need to choose a password when you set up your account. It has to be between five and eight characters long, using a mix of numbers, special characters and letters (ideally in both upper and lower case). Names, words or anything that could be associated with you (such as your car number plate) are not secure passwords.
As part of the standard service, your site will be allocated to one of two servers, which will form the first part of your URL (Uniform Resource Locator, or in this case, Web address). You can coose your user name, which falls at the end of your URL. This will also be your directory name on the server, the first eight letters of which will be your login name. So if, for example, your directory is 'here-is-my-homepage', your URL will be http://www.demon.co.uk/here-is-my-homepage/ and your login will be 'here-is'.
For an additional £200 per year you can choose Demon's Web Forwarding option, allowing your URL to include your name or the name of your company. This would mean your URL would be http://www.your-domain/. Domain names usually end in .co.uk or .com. If .co.uk is chosen, the domain names should reflect the name of your company and must be at least four letters in length (except in exceptional circumstances).
Space is rented from Demon on the basis that you maintain your own site. This means you need to understand how to upload, copy and maintain your own pages. Learning a few basic UNIX commands can also be useful.
Before uploading your pages to the site, it's important to ensure that your first page is called index.html. There are two steps to uploading your files. First using an ftp tool, you'll need to upload your files to the /incoming folder (directory) of your home directory on whichever server you've been allocated. This is accomplished using the 'Put' command, with all images set to binary. Unlike anonymous FTP, you will be logging in using your assigned login name and your password. This process ensures that no-one else can make alterations to your pages.
Macintosh users will need to use Fetch, ensuring that you put the correct information in the following windows: Host: server name; User ID: your login name; Password: your password and Directory: /incoming.
In the Fetch upload dialog box, check the Raw Data box. Once your files have been successfully uploaded, close the FTP session and then quit the FTP tool. Now you move to step two, which involves telneting in to your server and copying your files from /incoming to /docs.
If you have never used telnet before, there are telnet programs available for both Windows and Macintosh. A DOS-based Demon dial-up system uses the net> prompt to issue the Telnet command: net> telnet www.demon.co.uk
To copy files, you will need to use the UNIX command: cp. If you are only copying one file to the /docs folder (e.g. yourfile.html), use the command: cp yourfile.html ../docs/
If you are copying more than one file, then use: cp * ../docs/
When updating your site, you don't have to send all your web files each time. If you have altered only one or two files, then you need only upload those, ensuring that they are first uploaded to the /incoming folder first.
Once your site is up and running, you can find out roughly how many visitors your homepage has had. Every page and every image which is accessed by a visitor will show a hit, so you'll get the best results from looking at the logs for your index.html. Bear in mind, however, that this can't rely on this for complete accuracy.
FTP into your log directory to extract the information. This log is updated every week. Be warned that if your site is popular, the log extract can be quite large. If you wish, you can display a graphical count of visits to your site: this hit counter is offered as a service to Demon customers, but is unsupported.
Just how popular your site is will depend on a number of factors, including its content, readability, interest-factor and how well it is publicised. Try to encourage friends with web pages and webmasters at other relevant sites to include a link to your site.
Writing, designing and laying out the documents isn't as technical as it may at first appear, and the sense of achievement, once they're completed, is well worth the effort. In its first six months on-line, The White House site had around 1.25 millions hits. If you can beat that, you're onto a winner!