How to Create a Webpage
So you think you'd like to see yourself become famous on the web? Great! It's easy!Webpages are made of three basic parts: text, graphics, and HTML (HyperText Markup Language - one of the languages of the web) coding "tags" enclosed within the less-than and greater-than symbols (< >). To see the coding that goes behind a webpage, let's take a look at the code for this one. Move your mouse up to your browser's menu bar at the top of the screen and click on "view" or some similar option, then look for "document source" or "view document source". Choose that option and your browser should display a new window with the text I've typed for this page. Go ahead, do it now, then close the source window to come back to this page.
Was it scary? If it was, don't worry because there are lots of HTML editors available now that shield you from the coding tags like a word processor shields you from the "tags" your printer needs to print different size fonts, bold, italics, etc. The cost of these editing programs ranges from free, to around $200, depending on how complex they are. You can find a good list from Yahoo! of the programs that are available at this address. You can find other information on building a webpage there, too.
Graphics can be created either from scratch in a drawing program like Windows' Paintbrush, or they can be "art" (photographs, illustrations, etc.) that's scanned into electronic form with a scanner. You can also find lots of "free" art on the web itself, but copyright laws prohibit you from using it unless it's specifically stated as released for use by the public. You can look for one such source of free art icons at this address.
I created all the art used in Village Square with Windows' Paintbrush drawing program, which uses bitmap files with the .BMP extension. I then converted those files to the .GIF file format that's most common to the web. If you're doing your own page and don't have software that will save your art in .GIF format, email me and I'll be happy to find a way to convert your files for you.
Adding the graphics to your webpage requires some more HTML tags that "call" your graphic into the webpage layout as the page is loaded by your browser. These are called "inline" graphics, and most browsers have the option of not loading them if the connection speed to too slow. If you go back to viewing the source code for this page, you'll see the HTML tags for the background and header graphics displayed at the top of the page right after the <body> tag. You'll also find the color indications for the page's text and hotlinks indicated in hexadecimal form (that's base 16 for you math wizards).
Don't let this scare you off graphics however, because your HTML editor program will handle most of this without any coding! All you'll need to type in is the name of your graphics file in .GIF format. The editor will do the rest.
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So now you want graphics, too?
Of course, you can build yourself a text-only webpage. But that's pretty borrrring. What you really need are some fun graphics. Nothing too fancy, mind you. (Well, fancy is ok, but big graphic files take a long time to download on the web.) You'll probably want your page to at least have a "background" graphic (like the cream & white one on this page), plus some fun little "icons" you can add to color and spice up your information.
So let's get started already!
Once you've got your tools, the only thing left is to come up with ideas for your page. But I'm afraid I can't help you with that nearly as much as you'll learn from just surfing and gathering ideas from other pages. So grab that mouse and start clicking!