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Publishing has never been this easy. Start right here if you want to have your own Web page.
Why have a Web presence?
Why have a Web presence?
The World Wide Web is the greatest self-publishing venture ever. In days gone by, if you wanted to have your words or ideas published, there were two avenues open to you. The first was to have a publishing company think highly enough of your offering to take it on themselves to publish it. The second was vanity publishing -- where you'd pay to have your own work published, usually in a small print run.
With the Web, you can have a print run of millions and it'll cost you peanuts.
The World Wide Web is a place where you can publish anything from a one-page biography to a complete novel; from a company brochure to an art catalogue. And you're not restricted to publishing words and pictures -- music, video, animation and computer programs are all publishable on the Web.
Your presence on the Web can be as simple as a single
'page' containing text, graphics, sound and links to
other sites on the Web; or it can run to dozens and
dozens of pages all linked together. Whether simple or
complex, each Web site centres around a homepage.
What you need
What do you need to build your own home on the Web?
- A little knowledge of HTML (hypertext markup language -- the language used to write Web pages). You can even get by without knowing any HTML at all if you use one of the many programs designed to turn your plain text into fully-tagged HTML code.
- An HTML editor or word processor and, if you want to complement your words with visual or aural images of your own making, a graphics package and a sound editor.
- A connection to an Internet service provider prepared to offer you some space for your pages, and Web browsing software.
- An idea of what you want to say to the digitally connected world.
Content, content, content
That last requirement -- an idea of what you want to say -- is really your starting point.
To tell the truth, the Web is stuffed with homepages designed by people who haven't a clue what they're saying, and there's no compulsion to make your place on the Web meaningful or enlightening to any degree. If you have no idea whatsoever of what you want to say, and you simply feel a compulsion to join the myriad of others with a homepage, then go right ahead. But you, and the millions of potential visitors to your page, are going to get a lot more from the experience if you have some purpose to your page.
On the Web, of course, one person's trivia is another person's reason for living. If you're passionate about racing cane toads, the Web may well be the place for you to advertise your passion and attract like-minded beings. There are already sites devoted to pet rocks and Ken dolls, so your arcane pleasures have the chance of gaining world recognition.
You may have a serious purpose for establishing a homepage: a chance to connect with others who share similar views or pastimes; a desire to share your philosophy of life; a wish to promote a cause or organisation or disseminate information about a particular topic. You may wish to establish a presence for your company or community group on the Web. You may simply wish to let people know you exist.
Whatever your purpose for building a homepage, think
it through first, go for a surf around the Web to get an
idea of what's possible and what seems to work well, and
then decide how you want your page or pages to look and
work. Nut out the best design on paper first before
trying to code it.
Web tools
Once you have your purpose and your design, you'll need tools to convert your ideas into a document that's Web-ready.
Pages on the Web use a (mostly) standard series of formatting tags, called hypertext markup language, or HTML. If you want a word to be in italics, for instance, you precede the word with the HTML tag <I> and follow it with the tag </I>.
There are tags for formatting text and headers, inserting images, creating tables and multi-panelled forms, connecting to other Web pages and sites on the Internet, and a host of other purposes.
The good news is, you don't have to learn these tags. Knowing about them will certainly help you if you want complete control over your Web page design, but it really isn't essential. That's because there are many programs that do the tagging work for you.
These programs divide into two types: HTML editors and HTML converters.
The editors provide a set of icons and menu options which let you insert tags automatically. For instance, if you want a neat horizontal rule separating parts of your page, you simply position the cursor in your document where you want the line and click the Horizontal Rule icon. The HTML editor will insert the correct HTML tags for a horizontal line into your document.
If you want to use a graphic as the background for your Web page, you'll find a menu selection or toolbar icon to guide you through the process of locating the graphic on your hard disk. Once again, the necessary tags will be inserted automatically for you.
There are also programs that convert documents you create using your word processor into HTML equivalents. WordPerfect 7.0 has this feature built-in, while Microsoft supplies the Internet Assistant for Windows 95 and Windows 3.1 versions of Microsoft Word, which does a similar job.
The nifty thing about these programs is you don't have to think in terms of Web page design at all. You simply create a document using the standard word processing techniques (including inserting pictures or sound objects) and then save the document in HTM (hypertext) format, or convert an existing document to the Web format.
There are dozens and dozens of tools you can use to
create your Web pages. To help you choose, here are our
favourites:
HTML converters
If you are already familiar with WordPerfect or Word for Windows and don't want to get your hands dirty with HTML coding, then you'll save yourself a lot of time by getting WordPerfect 7.0 or Microsoft's Internet Assistant for Word (free to download from Microsoft's Web site at www.microsoft.com). Microsoft also includes converters for most of its other applications too.
HTML editors
If you're after a good HTML editor, it's hard to go past HotDog Pro. This Australian-made HTML editor has an attractively garish interface and a constantly improving feature set -- visit the HotDog site at www.sausage.com.au for the latest feature list and a freely downloadable evaluation version..
Like any good HTML editor, it automates the process of placing HTML tags into your document. It also provides a viewing window which shows just how your page will look when viewed on the Web. This makes the job of creating a Web page considerably easier.
If you're interested in creating a complete Web site -- perhaps for your company or a community organisation -- then it's hard to resist FrontPage, a commercial package from Microsoft.
Not only does FrontPage let you create
Web pages without resorting to any HTML coding, it also
lets you structure and keep track of a complete Web site
containing multiple pages, and it automates procedures
that used to require CGI scripts (additional programming
code in yet another language).
With FrontPage you can design user-response forms, surveys, searches of your Web site, tables and more with click-and-drag ease. See the FrontPage Web site at http://www.microsoft.com/msoffice/ frontpage for more information.
Graphics & sound tools
While you can use almost any graphics package to create and edit images for your Web page, most of us at PC User still use Digital Workshop's great shareware product, Paint Shop Pro.
It lets you create and save graphics in the GIF and JPG formats common on the Web, and provides image manipulation tools that'll let you grab a photo or other image and edit it to your heart's content. You can get more information and download the shareware version from Digital Workshop's Web site at http://www.digitalworkshop.co.uk.
For animated graphics, you can choose to use high-level tools such as Macromedia's Director for Shockwave animations. But an easier way for most of us is to create simple animations using the GIF Construction Set, which can be downloaded from the developer Alchemy Mindworks' Web site at http://www.mindworkshop.com/alchemy/alchemy.html.
Finally, for recording and editing sound files, Syntrillium Software's Cool Edit is hard to beat. Yet another shareware program, Cool Edit does a great job in recording, editing and compressing sound files so they don't take up too much space and time downloading. The shareware version is available for download from http://www.syntrillium.com/products.htm.
We frequently have these Web authoring tools on the monthly PC User Offline CD-ROM. See What's New for what's on this month's disc.
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All text © 1997 Australian Consolidated Press - PC User Magazine