 Number 209 - October 2000 |
| Web Publishing | ||
| by SIG Leader Ted Williams, MCSE, MCSD-NOCCC, webmaster@tlwilliams.net - April 2000 | ||
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It is not hard to get
started in Web Publishing. And the rewards can be considerable. You can
provide a community service by providing information that is of help to
others, you can enhance an existing business, or start a business of
your own. You can work with others all over the world on your avocation
or on a project that you have wanted to start. You may even find that it
grows into a career opportunity.
All you need is a way to compose your web pages and a place to put these pages so that others can access them. Your Internet Service Provider (ISP) may allow you to put a small web site on their servers at no additional charge. If not, there are many inexpensive web-hosting companies. Http://www.hiway.com will host a small site for $25/month plus a setup fee. Http://www.gvwebnet.com will also host a small site for $10/month plus a setup fee. These companies will help you select your own domain name. The cost of obtaining a domain name is about $35 per year. The first two years must be paid up front. There are also many companies that will host your site free, but they all add advertising of one sort or another to your web pages, which can distract from the appearance of your site. This type of free site may leave the impression that you endorse the products advertised, even though you have little or no control over the advertising. You may compose web pages with just a text editor such as Notepad. Word processing programs, such as Microsoft Word, may also be used, but a simple text editor will not insert stuff into your page of which you are not aware. A simple text editor allows you to learn how HTML works without hiding the underlying structure from your view. Later, you may want to use Front Page or other products that shield you from the underlying HTML structure. Homesite, available at www.allaire.com/homesite, is a web-authoring tool that allows you to work directly with the HTML. Homesite provides many helpful tools that will improve the pages that you produce. It is available for about $89. Are you unsure about how to compose a web page? There are hundreds of helpful books that you can select from. The book Teach Yourself Web Publishing with HTML 4 in 21 Days by Laura Lemay is one of the better introductory texts. The O'Reilly book HTML - The Definitive Guide is an excellent reference. You |
may find lots of tips and tricks on the web. My web site at www.tlwilliams.net has many recommendations on getting started in Web Publishing.
Browsing the web is quite useful in learning about how great sites are built. While viewing a web page in your browser, right click your mouse while the cursor is over the web page in the browser window. From the menu that pops up, select View Source. Voila! The HTML source for that page is shown in a text window. Study a variety of pages to see how others have used HTML in clever ways. One word of warning - some web authors try to employ every HTML capability at their disposal, often with disap-pointing results. Millions of users have older browsers that cannot process many of the newer features currently available. Others use Macintosh computers, portable devices, and set top boxes that connect to a TV. It is best to stick with the basic HTML and avoid many of the newer features.1 The above mentioned O'Reilly book describes which HTML features are implemented on most browsers and which are not. Even if you do not intend to construct your own web page, take a closer look at HTML just to see how it works. At the least, you will become a more savvy web user.
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Number 209 - October 2000
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