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| Quick Tip #1: Learn how everyone else does it | ||||
| Like everyone else who first starts out, you may look at a page and
say, "Wow, I couldn't do anything like that!" Guess what? You
can! What may look difficult is simply a matter of know-how.
What you don't know can cost you money. And the less you know, the
more unscrupulous people will be happy to take advantage of you.
All instructions will be for Windows OS. Netscape and Internet Explorer may work the same in other OS's, but I've never tried. However, I'm sure that MAC, Amiga and Warp users are used to people assuming the world is Windows and have learned to work around this assumption. Please be aware, I'm personally anti-Microsoft, but I've been forced the way most people have just to get things done, so I apologize for the ignorance in advance. The first thing to do is check out the source code to see how a page
is put together. To do this, do the following:
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| Quick Tip #2: Books and other stuff |
| Feeling a little more comfortable, but the code still looks confusing? Now's the time to pick up one of the best books on the market for really learning HTML: Laura Lemay's Teach Yourself Web Publishing with HTML 4 in 14 Days, published by sams.net. There's lots of great guides. Ms. Lemay is an excellent teacher, allowing more knowledgeable students to pass over certain text that they may already be familiar, while making the greener student feel perfectly at ease for not knowing the basic details. My sister used this book and found out that setting up her own web page was a whole lot easier than a webmaster who was trying to get her business told her. She changed webmasters and found an honest one. |
| Quick Tip #3: Using pictures, animation, etc. |
| This is one of my favorite topics. You have your .jpg, or .jpeg
(pronounced jay-peg) files, your .gif (pronounced jiff or giff, depending
on the person) files, .bmp (bitmap) files: which should you use?
Rule #1 is called the KISS rule -- Keep It Simple, Stupid. This is
not a reflection on you. This rule has been around since the early
days of mainframe programming (that's back in the dinosaur ages before
personal computers came about). Basically, the more complex your
page is, the longer it will take to load.
Ever try loading a page that had so many pictures that you finally gave up and went somewhere else because you weren't going to sit around for ten minutes waiting for the page to finish loading? The page was probably loaded with .jpg formatted pictures (aka pics or pix). The way you can know this is, move the mouse over a finished picture, click the right mouse button, and next to the "View Image" will be the picture's file name. The last part of the name is the giveaway. Animated .gif's are really nice, and like their non-animated partners, they take relatively little time to come up. take a look at Die Trying, and you'll see what I mean. .jpg formats are gorgeous, but takes much longer to load than a .gif format, and it tends to not really look any different. Unless it's really necessary that your pics be in .jpg format, get them converted or just use .gif pics. Your visitors will be very glad you did. |
| Quick Tip #4: Getting assistance |
| Okay. You're finally comfortable writing HTML code and setting
up your own pages. You saw something really cool that you decided
to add to your page, but no matter what you do, the stupid thing won't
work the way you think it's supposed to. Here's where you can head
for the best free help to be found anywhere, the Usenet Newsgroups.
If you've never used the newsgroups, contact your ISP (Internet Service
Provider) tech support, and they will be happy (most of the time) to tell
you how to access the newsgroups. Most browsers have a search engine
that will locate all newsgroups that contain the keyword you provide.
If you want to see what HTML newsgroups are out there, just type html
in the keywords box, and you'll see something like the following:
alt.html alt.html..critique (this one looks like a good one for those of you who can stand it) alt.html.webedit comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html microsoft.public.activex.authoring.html and so on, and so on.... The same goes for Java, or anything else you're interested in, like maybe, Sliders (a favorite of mine on the SciFi channel). One very important note: for all the good people who will try to assist you, there will always be the know-it-all idiot (you know the person -- they've learned enough to be dangerous, but not enough to be truly knowledgeable) who will "flame", or attack, the person with the question. Ignore that person and wait for some good response. Flamers will bring out the best people to help you with your situation while verbally getting their butts kicked. And when that happens, I guarantee that they will not show their faces again for help because people like me write down their email addresses. They'll sign up with someone like Yahoo with a bogus name so they can get some help. Remember: everyone must crawl before they walk, and walk before they run. Don't ever be a jerk, because you may need the help of the people you slammed one day. One last thing: when you go to ask a question, make sure you've tried to find the answer on your own. If you want someone to do it for you, then hire a web page designer. The pros will not appreciate questions that can be found in any basics book and you will deservedly get the remark, RTM (read the manual). If you continue to ask questions without looking it up yourself, the polite RTM will change to RTFM. If you have, indeed, tried to find the information, make sure you preface your request with, "I've gone all through the book, book title, and I can't find this anywhere. Can someone please point me in the right direction?" That will usually prompt people to either tell you where the solution to your problem can be found, or they will offer you a solution. Make sure you are at all times honest. It won't take long for the pros to figure out you're pulling a fast one if you're not honest about your research, and you will be placed on a hit list. Even if you change your name, you better change your style of writing as well, because they'll recognize that, too. |
| Quick Tip #5: Web Page Designers |
| If you're not too comfortable even after all that, get a web page designer.
Netscape Communicator comes with an excellent one. I love it because
I can throw together a web page in a very short period of time. Want
to know how I did this page? Twas simple. I started out with
"Insert" then "Table", selected one row and one column, with a 5-pixel
padding for the cells, and also clicked "use color" for each table I created.
When I was finished filling out the first line on a table, I hit the tab
key, which gave me a second row with the same color. To set the background
color, I clicked "Format" then "Page Color and Properties".
Using the web page designer loads all the html code for you. You can add a picture if it's on your pc by clicking on the icon button labeled image at the top. There's a few other things, but I'll leave them for you to figure out on your own. |
| Quick Tip #6: Results | ||||
You're about to announce your web site, but you have to make it easy
to find. If you haven't gotten a web site, check out the free sites
that are available. I'll be including some freebie sites on my homepage
to different areas if you're interested. I will also include a section
on free sites, so that, if you're interested, you can find free animated
.gif files and loads of other really nice freebies. As for getting
your site recognized, it'll need to be loaded to the major search engines.
The big ones are Yahoo, Excite, Alta Vista and Lycos. Netscape has
one, too, but I haven't been too thrilled with it yet. My favorite
is Yahoo, just because it finds exactly what I'm looking for 99% of the
time. The rest don't. There are a few places that can put your
site to multiple search engines for a small fee ($5-$10 for up to 400 search
engines), but it's imperative that you set up your pages with enough descriptive
keywords page META tags to make a search engine find you easily.
Without them, you might as well be twiddling your thumbs. There are
two ways to do this:
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