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The info here might not apply to you in some cases, but it might help you a lot...
I understand that you want to make a page of your own, in the easiest way possible. That's why I created this section: I wanted to bring you some knowledge that will ease the burden of understanding what's going on "up there", as we say.
The big idea is supposed to be that you edit your files without any HTML editors, just plain-text editors, and that's what the references here listed are devoted to, for your to learn HTML by hand. But you can still use any of your favorite HTML editors...
Your best bet is to get a home page at GeoCities. It's a totally noncommercial, free approach. Look at the bottom of the page for the link to GeoCities. But you don't NEED to do so.
When you got your account, a directory (pointed by the URL your home page provider gave you) was created. There is where your files are saved. That directory has read-only access rights, so that no one can wreak havoc on your "personal site".
To understand this, you have to know that what your browser does is request any data from the server where your files are stored, and display it. That's why your server has to have the most up-to-date files that you have made and/or edited, so that everyone has access to view those files.
From now on, I'll assume you wanted to make your page by editing directly the HTML codes, which is what my site was intended for.
If what you want to do is edit your file on your computer and then upload it, do the following:
Now make the changes you wanted and save your file. You're supposed to read the help for HTML in these pages to learn how to edit your home page. Afterwards upload it to the server. You can't directly edit your page on the server with your favorite editor. That's simply because you don't have access to write your own directory via the standard methods. You probably have to authenticate yourself to mess around with your site, that's why you have to upload the edited files out of your computer.
To upload a file, you generally use the FTP utility. My best bet is to teach you how to use it, so that's why I'll explain it. If you don't have any FTP utilities, then go to my More information page, look for the link on Tucows, and go there. You'll find a lot of shareware FTP utilities. For those who use Windows 95, you already have an FTP utility. It's called FTP and it's located in your Windows folder.
I forewarn you that it's up to you to learn HOW the FTP client you have works... I can't guess how to do it when there are THOUSANDS of utilities out there...
So, while connected to the Internet, start your FTP client and locate yourself in the directory where you have your files. Then, connect to the FTP server of your home page provider and login. The info for this procedure has to be provided by your home page provider, and I cannot know how the login and connect procedures are for EACH home page provider.
Then, activate binary transfer. Start puting all the files you want . Check if all of them are spelled in lowercase. Your best bet is to have an index.html file (not index.htm) as the main page. Now, sit down, drink a coffee, relax, and when it's finished, the files have been updated.
Use descriptive names and keep your documents without spaces in the filenames, because many servers, including the GeoCities server, don't support spaces in the file names; use underscores ("_") instead. You'll thank me for that prevision after you submit your files to the server.
Now, the document organization itself. Save the main document with the name "index.html". At least in GeoCities, that's the main document that is loaded when the URL is accessed. To create more pages, simply create other documents and save them in the same directory (with an .html extension, you know that). Logically, you'll reference them with links in your own "index.html", isn't that true?
It might be better to take an example, so that we can see it better. Let's take mine: this site, as you're seeing right now, was originally on an "HTML" folder on my hard disk where all of the files related to this homepage were stored. The main file (usually index.html) was located there too. I had all my related MIDIs and GIFs and external pages there, so that I could submit them at once. I created the links as follows: when I had to reference a graphic, I didn't have to put any URLs or pathnames, I just put a filename instead, because as the files were all in the same folder, my browser let me preview them as if they were online. As normally you keep all of your files of your page in the same location on the net, it was exactly as it was supposed to be viewed. A friend of mine used FrontPage: he had the problem that when he saved his page to disk, FrontPage would convert all of the relative URLs in absolute ones, so, when he submitted the files to the server, all of the references were locale to a hard disk. Bad time for my friend.
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