Data Bases • Custom Term Papers • Free Term Papers • Free Research Papers • Free Essays • Free Book Reports • Plagiarism? Links • Top 100 Term Paper Sites • Top 25 Essay Sites • Top 50 Essay Sites • Search 97,000 Papers @ DirectEssays.com • Search 101,000 Papers @ ExampleEssays.com • Search 90,000 Papers @ MegaEssays.com Free Essays • Term Paper Sites • Chuck III's Free Essays • Free College Essays • TermPaperSites.com • My Term Papers • Get Free Essays • Essay World • Planet Papers	Search Lots of Essays Back to Subjects - Technology Basic Web Design Basic Web Design Today it looks like everyone has a web page, and you always see advertisements on the web for free web page hosting. While it may seem a bit overwhelming to someone who has never done it before, it is easy enough. Making a basic web page is easy. All you need to know is a few basic HTML commands, and a computer with the program Notepad (if you have a computer, you have notepad). First I will explain a little bit about HTML, like what it does, what it means, and how it works. Then I will give the most basic tags you will need to know so that you will be able to make a basic web page on your own. Finally I will give some pointers on how to get a page on the internet. What is HTML, what does it do, and how does it work? HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language, it is the language that all web pages start with. HTML tells your web browser (Internet Explorer, or Netscape) what to display when you visit a web page. It says what colors to show, how big text and pictures should be, and how the text and pictures are formatted. HTML works by surrounding commands with the greater than, and less than symbols. For example, all web pages start with this command *html*, and end with */html*. That tells a computer that a web document is beginning, and when it ends. It may seem a bit scary thinking you have to know an entire programming language to make a web page, but it is not a hard concept to grasp. Instead of looking at it like it is a foreign language, think about it like you are writing a note to someone who was only meant to read certain parts. The commands tell the computer what to read as HTML, and when to stop reading them. If you were to write a note to the person, you would put hints that tell the person what they were supposed to read, and that is how HTML works. Now that there is some, not much, but some idea of how these pages are written, lets look at some of the important commands that make a page work. As stated earlier, all web documents must begin and end with the *html* tag. So the first thing you would do would be to open Notepad, or even Microsoft Word and type *html*, and no the commands are not case sensitive, so it does not have to be upper or lower case letters. Now that the computer knows that you are creating a web document, we will go on to the commands that make your web page display something. The very next command, or tag you need to put in the document is the *title* tag. When you look at a web page, you notice in the top left hand corner of your browser that the title of the web page is showing, that is what this tag does. For example, your page to be called “My Page,” then you would type this: *title*My Page*/title*. In case you are wondering, the */title* means that you are done typing the title. If you forget to end your tags with */*, the computer will think you want everything you type to be in the last tag you typed. So far your page should look like this: Now that you know how to start a web page, lets move on to the body of the page. Luckily enough, HTML tags are pretty easy to remember, like *title* for the title, and now *body* for the body. The *body* tag tells the computer what to actually display on the web page. Before you start typing 18 pages of text, there are a few rules you should know. First, you have to include formatting tags to tell the computer how big your text is, and if it is centered, left aligned, or right aligned. Say you wanted your web page to load and say “Welcome to my Page”, and you wanted it to be very large, and centered. This is how the document would look. *h1 align=”center”*Welcome to my Page*/h1* The command “h1” is the biggest text command there is, and it goes all the way to “h4”, which is the smallest. After the “h1” is the command align=”center”, that means that until you type */h1* it will be centered. Now maybe you want to give some information about yourself. To make the page show that a paragraph has ended you use the *p**/p* tags, so if you wanted to say who you are and what you like to do, but wanted that smaller than what “Welcome to my Page” it may look like this: *h1 align=”center”*Welcome To My Page*/h1* *h2 align=”left”*My Name is bob, I like cats. My only friends are the ones I meet in chat rooms. Will you be my friend?*/h2**/p* The last of these basic HTML tags I will cover is how to link to another web page. A hyperlink is what you click on in a web page to go to another web page, like someone else’s page, or maybe you have another page that has the names and descriptions of your cats. This tag starts with *a href=”the address of the page”* and ends with */a*. in between the *a href=”the address of the page”* and */a* tags, you put the text that you click on to take you to the other page. When you see a link on a page, it is always underlined, and a different color than the rest of the text. Luckily it automatically shows up like that, so you do not have to do anything special. So if Bob wanted to link to his friends page, then his page would look like this: *h1 align=”center”*Welcome To My Page*/h1* *h2 align=”left”*My Name is bob, I like cats. My only friends are the ones I meet in chat rooms. Will you be my friend?*/p* click *a href=”http://www.petespage.com”* here*/a*to see Pete’s Page*/p* Thanks for visiting my site!*/p**/h2* Those are the least of the commands you need to know to make a page. Just remember, when you finish typing the HTML in notepad, which I recommend over Microsoft Word, you must save it as a word document, and after you type the name end it with .html. For example, Bob’s page, though lame, is finished. He saves it in Notepad as a text document with the name mypage.html on his desktop. Now lets say he uses Internet Explorer as his web browser, the file would show up on his desktop as an Internet Explorer file, all he would have to do to view it is double click on the file, and it will show up on his browser. If wanted to edit the file he would first have to open Notepad, and open mypage.html from there (had he not saved it as a text document, he would not be able to edit it). Now that you can make a basic web page, here is how to get it on the Internet. There are many web sites that will give you a free web page, I prefer Angelfire, the address is www.angelfire.com. They will give you an account, and you will be able to type in you HTML directly on the web site. Free web page sites will also give you any help you could possibly want in building a web page. They will tell you how to add pictures, backgrounds, and all that other fun stuff, and its all free. These sites are a great way to have your own site on the net (if you do not mind advertisements popping up when people visit it) and to learn more about web page design. The best part is, you only need to know those basic commands to get started. Now that we have learned what HTML is, and how to get started making a page, you should have your page out there in cyber space in no time. Just remember that there are millions of sites out there on the net especially written to help beginners with their pages, and to have fun. Also remember that no matter how bad you think your page looks, I promise that there are thousands that are much worse. Bibliography: Word Count: 1449
Copyright © 1998-2008 College Term Papers, INC All Rights Reserved. DMCA Notifications and Requests