How to put up a web page

Putting a page up on the web

This was intended for members of my sporting body. Feel free to use it though.
I am not a professional, this is what I have discovered for myself. Requires no knowledge of HTML, which most of the other "how to" sites take for granted. To see what your browser makes the web page you are viewing from, hit PAGE SOURCE from the VIEW menu (up the top)
Your not going to win any awards either, what you will have is a basic web page. Being artistic helps a lot, which I ain't.
There may be other better ways to do it, but this is what I do. I don't claim this covers everything, but it will give you the basics. Experiment, and have fun.
Read this first, then might be an idea to print it out, for reference as you go along.
This assumes you have 2 things 1. Netscape Communicator Professional Edition ( Its free on most CD on Computer magazine covers), or download fromNETSCAP

Microsoft Internet Explorer works much the same, their web page making programme is called FrontPage Express and comes with the latest version of Internet Explorer (the one I got anyway) its also available on magazine CD's or with Windows 98, it just installs anyway, ot you can get it from microsoft. This tells how to use Netscape, but the MS one works similar, but not the same.

2. Free pages from Geocities (or ones you pay for). You can sign up for them from Geocities

There are other places where you can get web space, which work much the same, but this describes how to do it with Geocities. Geocities and most others have pop up boxes with ads that is what pays for the free web space, well there's no such thing as a free lunch I spose. I'm tending more towards XOOM now, but its not as easy to upload the pages, you need to use FTP.
Some others are

http://xoom.com which has an excellent section on how to send up web pages using several different methods, including direct from your Netscape Composer or Internet Explorer Frontpage Express Programmes.
Fortunecity where you get 20 megabytes of space,
BigBlock.com.au. only 1 meg free..but the cool URL www.BigBlock.com.au/yourname, other PAY plans as well
Angelfire,
Here's the search results I did on Free Web Space using Metafind.(my fav search engine)
Just found this one, gives you a choice of languages and is a Free Web Space finder with over 280 places listed

You might have your own server space, but if your club wants someone else to do it then you need to change lots of stuff, this way, you only need to tell them the user name and password. There is also free E Mail included, so that, whoever maintains your site, will get the E Mail. For a personal page, might as well use your own server if you got the space. Check with your ISP for how to upload the pages to them, many use FTP (File Transfer Protocol) and most ISP's have a FTP programme on their site for you to use, or just do a search using your favourite search engine.

MAKE 2 new Folders, call one WEB PAGE and the other WEB IMAGES. OK they don't need to be called this, but it makes sense to me.

First you need some images, if you want them. 2 ways here,
WAY 1
Unless its a particularly generic image, if you get it from someone else's page, its good form to ask can you use it. Surf the net and find some, when you see one you like RIGHT CLICK on it and a small menu will pop up, choose SAVE AS and to the WEB IMAGES folder you have made. You can at this time change the name to something you will recognise, many images will be called image0974 or something, be better if you change it to blue boat , because that way you will know what it is. I will insert a small image here and give it a go. don't have to save it, just to see how it works, select the folder and all, but press Cancel and not Save, unless you want this image. This also applies to Animated Gifs (the little moving images) you can put them on as well. like this

There is also a web site that will create a nice animated GIF for you. your stuck with the size and colours, but U get to pick the style and words, an example

HINT to have the background invisible, leave the background colour blank.
CAUTION: Animated GIF's and spinning images can be annoying, use them sparingly, or at least tastefully.
Its at http://graphics.zyris.com/zygraphics/z3danimate/inputnew.asp You can also select page backgrounds by clicking on the page and saving in the same manor.
There are places which have large collections for you to use, such as, most of these places also want u to buy something, but have freebies as a come on.

WAY 2
Use your own pictures, if you don't have a scanner, Kodak Express stores will put 20 images on a CD for you for about $10, takes a couple of days to do. Tell them you want to E Mail them, that way they will save them in a format suitable for the web. GIF or JPEG are the ones to go for. For pictures JPEG is better because they make a much smaller file (faster loading).
If you have some kind of a photo program, you can resize the image to a workable size, remember most screens are 800 x 600 or 1280 x 768, so there's not much point going bigger than this. (i.e. I was once sent me an image and it was 3176 x 4002 pixels and 819 kb [ 1/2 a regular floppy], I made it 596 x 751 and 57kb) Make sure to save the resized image under a different file name (put a 2 on the end or something) so you always have the first one to play with.

GETTING DOWN TO IT

When you open Netscape, go to COMPOSER (this is from the COMMUNICATOR menu at the top, or by clicking the pen and paper in the bottom right hand corner. If you don't have this, you have the Standard edition. and not the professional one.

I suggest that you, start by pressing all the buttons and opening all the boxes and menus, take a look what's there, and have a play with a page first. On Win 95 and Win 98, a small description will come up of what the box is.

When the page opens just start typing, just put whatever you want I suggest that you put in 5 or 6 extra lines and then come up to the top to start typing, This is so that if you insert something you can always get under it, if you need to. If you put in a table or a line, you cant get past it. Have a whack at it first, don't need to put it up, just an experimental page.

STYLE -(with normal showing) This is predetermined headings styles
TEXT -( showing Variable Width)You can change the typeface or the font size from the drop down boxes on the upper left. KEEP IN MIND that people will not see a fancy font, if they do not have it, Their machine will use a default font, So try to stick to well known fonts. To change the size, font or colour, of some text highlight it ( pass the mouse over it while holding the left button down, and then make the changes you want to. If you want to change ALL the TEXT, you can select SELECT ALL from the EDIT menu, and make the changes, you want. From the top FORMAT menu you can select some more Styles for the font.
TEXT COLOUR is from the drop down box beside the font size
Bold, Italics, Underlined Either as you go or selected text
Bulleted List. Like this, highlight the text you want bulleted or numbered and hit the button
Numbered List
Remove all Styles
Unindent
Indent Moves the selected text across, like this list only without the bullets
POSITIONING TEXT is done from the button on the same line as the text, its the right most one, this will open a drop down box for right, centre or left justified text.

PICTURES, to insert a picture use the IMAGE button on the toolbar at top.. Then BROWSE to the place where you have the images stored. and click the one you want. and OK Don't worry about all the options (the buttons in the box that comes up, with small triangles and stuff, that's for text alignment and text flow around the image, for now just insert them on their own line, also keep in mind if you do use some of these text flow options they appear differenty in Composer, than they do in a browser)

REMEMBER the more images and the bigger they are, they take longer to load, so don't go overboard

SIZING an IMAGE, right click on the image and select IMAGE PROPERTIES, this will bring up the same box as when you inserted them, near the bottom is DIMENSIONS, you only need to change one of these, the other will change by itself to keep the image in perspective. If they are big making them smaller is good because it will make the page load faster. If they are small, they will look crook if you make them bigger.
NOTE this does not change the size of the image, only the size it appears on the page. Later you can have it so that when people click on the image it takes them to the full sized one.

PAGE BACKGROUND you can have a colour, or an image. If you have a dark background, its better to use bold text, and make sure its a light colour, so it shows up better.
IF YOU SELECT AN IMAGE FOR THE BACKGROUND it must be very light or you will not be able to see the text on top of it. If you see a page background you like you can save it like an image.
From the FORMAT menu select PAGE COLOURS and PROPERTIES click on the BACKGROUND button and a palette of colours will pop out, click on the colour you want. Then Press OK NOTE some colours are not good because the words don't show up, particularly with links and stuff.. This is shown on in the box where you select the colour.
For a BACKGROUND IMAGE you BROWSE to the image you want to use, select it, and click OK. AGAIN be very careful with background images, so they do not overpower the text.

PAGE NAME, From the FORMAT menu, select PAGE COLOURS and PROPERTIES, Click on the GENERAL Tab and there is a place for putting in a page name, (This one is called How to put up a web page - take a look its written on the very top of this page) so type in a nice name, most Likely your Clubs Name - You can change this any time. Its also an idea to put in some KEYWORDS (power boats, racing, hydroplanes etc.) this is how some Search Engines (Yahoo, Excite etc.) catalogue pages.

You can smarten up a page by putting in some lines from the H Line button, see it looks cool. and divides the page into sections., just be sure to hit the ENTER key a few times and come back to put the line in, because you cant get under it if you have not.

TARGETS the place that a link on some other part of the same page will take you. Highlight a spot on the page, some text or the blank line just above it and hit the TARGET button, give it a name, you will understand. I made the section above this a Target and linked it from here. Click on it and see. These are good for explanations and more info about things, and can be used like footnotes.

LINKS. are links to another page or Targets on the same page. To link to a target, you must have the target already named. HIGHLIGHT the wording or Image you want the link to run from, then select the LINK button. 2 choices the TARGETS on the page are listed, select the one you want for this. TO LINK TO ANOTHER PAGE type in the complete URL (Web Address) e.g. -

http://www.planet.net.au/~alexst/apba.html in the link to box. This is the APBA home page. Easiest way to do this, without mistakes, is to use Netscape and go to the page you want and highlight the URL and CUT it out (use the EDIT menu). Then click the cursor in the box for the link and use the EDIT menu again only this time PASTE. You can link from ANY words or Images on the page, the link knows where to go (Provided you tell it the right place haha)

E MAIL: If you want to receive E Mail what you need to do is just put something like E Mail here or use one of the many E Mail Gifs, and make a link from it what you need to put in the link box is
mailto:you@wherever.com (your E Mail address)

Linking a SMALL IMAGE to a LARGER one. Right click on the image and select CREATE LINK USING SELECTED.. and type in the name of the Image, including the file type extension (i.e. image.gif) It is neatly printed in the box that comes up, so its not too hard. This is so you can have small images on the page, for faster loading, but if people want a better look, they can just click on it. If you want to have some writing about the image with the full sized one, you will need to make its own page, rather than do it this way, you can link off the image itself without problems, might be a good idea to have somewhere on the page saying click on any image to see a larger one.

Just click on this picture to see what I mean.

TABLES can be used click on the TABLE button and choose the number of rows and columns you want.

You can use a different colour for the background of the table if you want to

Or You can have each cell with a different colour

NOTE in some browses only those cells with something in them have a background colour

With Tables you can also make neat little boxes to put things in, like the How to make a page at the top of this. Choose TABLE 1 row, one column, and if you look down a bit it gives you an option how wide the table should be, you can select a percentage, or make it full width. Also on this box (at the top) is where you want the table on the page left, centre or right, put a mark in the right box. You can also choose a colour for the background of the box, The text colour in the box can be changed by going to FORMAT and then TEXT and gives you some choices, OR you can highlight it and use the TEXT COLOUR drop down menu.

SAVE YOUR PAGE to your new WEB PAGE folder and call it index this is important.
If you have more than one page, you can call the others whatever you like, but the first one MUST be called index.
To link to any other pages on your site, is the same as linking to another page on the net, type in the FULL URL (Uniform Resource Locator = web address) starting http://www.oocities.org/...........

If you make another page with a file name of "inboards" then the url (to link to) of that will be the base URL for your site with inboard.html added on the end
No matter where you got the images from on your page, when you save the page, it will gather them all up and save them in the same folder, where you saved the page.

A page of links to their favourite sites is something everybody has, why not you as well.

Try not to have the page too long, or with very large pictures, because it takes a while to load, you can divide it up into 2 or 3 (or more) pages, with small images, that you can click on to see the full sized one.Take a look at My Own Boat Page for an example of smaller images.

Once you have your pages up and working, and if you feel comfortable with what you have done so far, you can try your hand at some more advanced stuff..Make sure to try these on experimental pages first...OK
Want to ADD SOUND
Want to make a FRAME SITE
Using Java and adding it to your site

A final note, Netscape and Internet Explorer may see you page slightly differently, so have a friend with a different browser take a look at it, just to make sure it does not come up gobbledegook or with strange formatting.

Putting it up (Uploading the files, is the technical term)

3 WAYS !! THIS TIME
Use the PUBLISH button in Netscape Composer. You will need to fill in the FTP to publish to. (This should be available on the site where you are going to put it.). Also your USER NAME and PASSWORD. Make sure that you send all files associated with the page. If your changing something you only need to send up anything that has changed (or been added). Using this method you can not determine what is on the server where you are sending the pages. So log on using a regular FTP or Geocities File Manger occasionally, so you can clean out unwanted files.

WAY 2. Using an FTP Program, which usually lets you see what is on the server already, see the documentation for the FTP you are using. If you need an FTP program This is the one I use, it is basic and easy to use. To go up folders press the green up arrow at the top, on "your" side of the window.

For XOOM use the following
Profile name = anything u like Xoom makes sense to me though
Host Name/Address = ftp.xoom.com
Host Type = UNIX (Standard)
User ID = Your Xoom user name
Password = Your Xom password For Geocities (Using EZ Upload is easier for new users)
Profle name = Geocities
Host Name/ Address = ftp.oocities.com
Host Type = Automatic Detect
Unser ID = Your Geocities user name
Password = Your Geocities password

If your the only one who uses your computer you can check the SAVE PWD box
Then just press CONNECT If you want to add another Profile, just hit the NEW button

WAY 3, for Geocities only.
You need to go to the Geocities FILE MANAGER and type in your user name (that you gave when getting the page) and your password (that they E Mail out to you) If you change your E Mail address it sends out a new password, so if you hand it over to someone else to do, just go into the PROFILE EDITOR and put in their E Mail, and it will send them a new password. The passwords they have are not easy to remember, and you can change it, (or anything else like user name and stuff) to whatever you want.
To get to the Geocities File manager just type Geocities into the URL box on your browser, and then click on the bar at the top where it says MEMBERS AREA and select FILE MANAGER from the list. Its probably not a bad idea to save the File Manager page as a bookmark, to save mucking about to much all the time, your site will never be finished anyway, you'll always be adding bits a pieces.

Once you are in the FILE MANAGER go down to the part named EZ UPLOAD.
Put a tick in the box marked "convert .htm files to .html" (Some versions of Netscape save them as .htm files, it is important they are .html files)
Press one of the BROWSE Buttons and select the index file (Double click on it, or press the OPEN button, and it will put that file name in the box)
Press the next Browse button and when the box opens, on the bottom of the box which comes up. It says HTML files, click the triangle on the right and select ALL FILES, this will show you the rest of the files in the folder, select the next file
and so on. you can only send up 5 at a time, so it will take a while if you have a lot of stuff.
You MUST upload EVERY file used on your page, background images, all the little GIF's and images etc.
If you have the same image (Club Logo or background, or your own boat) on more than one page or if you have made the image on the page smaller using the netscape image properties box its still the same image, they only need to be uploaded once.
After the files are uploaded, it will take you to a confirmation page, where you can upload the next batch of files, OR where you can put a check mark in the box next to index.html and select view to see your handiwork, on the web.

Why its important that the first file name is index.html.
When you type in the web address in your browser, you don't need to put in the whole thing.
http://oocities.com/SouthBeach/6037
goes to the same place as
http://oocities.com/SouthBeach/6037/index.html

If the page is only a .htm file you need to type that whole thing in, PLUS Geocities tells you to do it this way

Getting Noticed

OK now you got the page, all you need is for people to find it, again couple of ways.
Do a search for similar interest pages, and when you find ones you like, send an E Mail to the web master ( I am only a web apprentice) and give him the URL and ask him to link to your site, its good form to give a reciprocal link. If your a boat club, make sure you send one to me.alexst@planet.net.au

List your site with the different individual search engines (Yahoo, Infoseek, Excite, WebCrawler etc.). You will need to go to them individually and look for the ADD URL link, in some cases there pretty small or out of the way, but it will be there somewhere, just fill in what they want to know, and when somebody does a search with that engine, bingo they found you.NOTE It may take a few weeks to appear in the searches, so don't panic if its not listed next day Incidentally I use Metafind, which searches several search engines at once, but has no URL listing themselves.

You can use a different colour for the background of the table if you want to
	Or You can have each cell with a different colour
		NOTE in some browses only those cells with something in them have a background colour