To create your website, you will have to become familiar with
HTML, which is the language used to program the websites. To
help you with your website, we have outlined the information and
steps you need to follow to get started. If you would like
to view a sample of the html programming required, please see
our sample with our comments. You
may want to also consult other
sources on how to write HTML.
Steps to Creating Web Pages
Web pages are created using Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML). You could use one of the commercially available HTML utilities (FrontPage, Dreamweaver, or others) to create this language. This tutorial assume that you are using a simple text tool such as notepad. You may save this file as any name you would like for now. You must and rename it to index.html before uploading it to our server.
HTML tags are used to describe the document to the browsers (Internet
Explorer, Netscape, Opera and Lynx). The browsers take care of
font formats, display resolution and the installed display device.
HTML documents are text based and can generally be transferred
over the Internet very quickly. Once you start to include graphic
files, transmission times increase.
1. Begin with the Basics
A Web page contains two things, the text of the document itself
and HTML tags that indicate the document's elements, structure,
format and hypertext links that connect to other documents or
included media.
Tags are identified by the angle brackets < > and most tags
are paired and surround the text that is being tagged. For example,
the title of your web page will be enclosed between <TITLE>
tags. The text does not need to be capitalized, but it makes it
easier to read in the document when you are editing.
Each HTML document has at least two sections, a heading and a
body. The entire document is surrounded by a tag that identifies
the document as being HTML formatted. Each document also needs
a title. To get started, here is a sample of the components described
above.
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Jenny Ross's Home Page </TITLE> <BR>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<H1>Welcome to my Home Page</H1> <BR>
2. Add a Paragraph or Two
Now, of course, you want to add some text to your home page. The
current standard for HTML requests that you surround paragraphs
with the <P> tag. Paragraphs are added within the <BODY>
of the HTML document. It doesn't matter how you enter your text,
the browser will format it to fit within its display window.
<BODY> <H1>
Welcome to my Home Page </H1> <BR> <P>
Hi, I am glad you found your way to my home page. I have included
below some of my favourite places to visit on the Web. I hope you
enjoy them as much as I do. <P>
<BODY>
3. Create a List of Places to Go
Now let's add a couple of websites that you would like your webpage
to link to. You must use the HTML link tag, which is often referred
to as the anchor tag. There are number of attributes that can be
used with the anchor tag; however, we are only going to cover a
couple.
An anchor tag includes a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) and reference
text and will generally look like this <A HREF="http://www.osc.on.ca/">Ontario
Science Centre </A>
The first part of the tag, HREF="http://www.osc.on.ca/"
is the URL, which indicates where to lead the user to when they
click on the highlighted reference text. This URL points to the
Home Page of the Ontario Science Center which in turns has it's
own links to other web pages.
Another URL form includes the name of the document. HTML documents
should always end with the extension .html. For example: <A
HREF="http://offworld.wwa.com/OFFHOME2.html">Welcome
To The Offworld Metaplex! </A>
So now let's add these two places to our home page. Since this
is a menu of options, we should surround the text with the <MENU>
tags. We use the list item tag <LI> to identify each item
in the menu. The <LI> tag is one of the tags that do not
operate with a paired closing tag.
Most web servers are operated on UNIX based computer systems.
It is important to note, that UNIX is a case-sensitive operating
system. "OFFHOME" and "offhome" are not equal
and care should be taken to observe the correct case when referencing
documents.
<BODY> <H1>Welcome
to my Home Page</H1> <P>
Hi, I am glad you found your way to my home page. I have included
below some of my favourite places to visit on the Web. I hope you
enjoy them as much as I do.<P>
<MENU>
<LI><A HREF="http://www.osc.on.ca/">Ontario
Science Centre<A>
<LI><A HREF="http://offworld.wwa.com/OFFHOME2.html">Visit
The Offworld Metaplex!</A>
</MENU>
<BODY>
4. Create an Image for Yourself
If you have the tools available, you could include a picture (or
"graphic") with your document. Most graphics included
on web pages are interlaced GIFS. If you have a graphic you would
like to include as a part of your title, include the following
line <IMG SRC="graphic.gif"> replacing graphic.gif
with the name of your file. You can also use images created with
computer drawing programs (for example, Corel Draw).
<BODY>
<H1> <IMG SRC="jennycorp.gif">Welcome to my
Home Page</H1>
5. Getting Some Feedback
There are some complex systems available for finding out whether
anybody has visited your home page, but the easiest by far is
to ask your reader to send you email. You can include at the bottom
of your document a place where the reader can easily send you
an email message. In order to do this, you use an anchor tag with
another URL form; the "mailto" key word.
The & copy represents the copyright sign. The <HR>
tag creates a horizontal ruled line across the page and the <BR>
tag causes a line break. Notice that the <ADDRESS> tags
are after the closing <<BODY> tag.
<BODY>
<HR>
<ADDRESS>
&& copy; Copyright 1995 Jenny Ross<br>
Send comments and suggestions via email to <A HREF="mailto:
">
<A>
<ADDRESS>
<HTML>
NOTE: Email harvesting programs MAY be able to harvest mailto links if you use the above method.
NOTE: Email harvesting programs may NOT be able to harvest mailto links if you use javascript to do this:
<script language="JavaScript"><!--
var name1 = "jross";
var domain = "sentex.ca";
document.write('<a href=\"mailto:' + name1 + '@' + domain + '\">');
document.write(name1 + '@' + domain + '</a>');
// --></script>
6. Mounting your Webpage
This is a simple home page, but it will provide a start. The next
step is to get your home page online so that everyone else can
see it. The following instructions include a few assumptions.
First, that you have an Internet account with an Internet
provider that has a web server, and that that provider is operating
with an UNIX based system. The second is that you know
how to transfer files to your Internet provider. Thirdly,
that your server is observing the industry standards.
Your home page file needs to be called index.html and stored in
a directory called public_html off your home directory.
In order to logon to our UNIX server and make the changes below, you will need a "SHELL access program". If you do not have a SHELL program, Sentex has made one available. It's called PUTTY and can be found in our downloads area - click here to go to our dowloads area.
To begin using PUTTY:
download it to your computer - install it - locate it in your start menu and double-click 'putty.exe'
Enter the following information and click 'open'
Click 'yes' to the following question:
Type your username and press enter.
Type your password and press enter.
NOTE: If you are having troubles accessing www.sentex.ca with your SHELL program, please
contact a Sentex representative and ask them for assistance.
Once you are able to successfully log in to www.sentex.ca using your user_id and password, here's what you do:
