For step-by-step instructions for making a very simple web-page for our computer systems in the CS Lab, take a look at this brief Web Page Tutorial.
To make a simple web page, just type in the text as well as the HTML tags needed for formatting. Save the file with the a name that ends in either ".htm" or ".html", and you have created a web page. On the systems at Jefferson, you need to put these files in a directory called "web-docs" so that our web server can see the file. If you are a teacher and have a LAN Account with space on the P-Drive, the file can be placed there also. After that, as long as our web server is working, anyone who has access to the Internet from any place in te world can read your files. With so many documents out there, though, the probablility of someone finding your stuff is rather remote unless you tell people about your files.
Lets look at an example: first.html
<HTML>
<BODY>
<H1> Computers are Great </H1>
Welcome to the Internet.
Learn HTML and make a Web Page!
</BODY>
</HTML>
See the results
Notice that even though the two sentences were on different lines, the
web browser put all the text together as one big blob. That may seem
irritating at first, but it can be an advantage in many ways. First,
it won't make any difference how unorganized the text is, the browser
will try to make it fit the size of the window. If someone makes the
window a different size, the text will adjust. In fact,
in order to make a paragraph, one must actually insert a paragraph
marker as shown in first example of the next section.
Any web pages that you make can be viewed on your computer using a browser like Netscape. To make those files available to other people on the Internet, you must place them on a "server" that is running some other special programs and its location, or "domain name", is know to others on the Internet. Because web servers run other complex programs and should maintain a high speed connection to the Internet 24 hours a day, most people will use commercial providers to host their web pages.
I hope this simple introduction will get you started making some web pages. For additional information, there are excellent resources on the Internet, and you can also buy a good reference book. One of my favorite resource texts is Web Design in a Nutshell published O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. You can also learn a lot by looking at the "source" of other people's web pages. When you see a page you admire, click on the "View" option, and then Click on "Source". The browser will open a new window and will show you the HTML code that created that page.
There are also new features being added to the web design all the time. Unless you are under 17, however, it is almost impossible to keep up. Just do what you can do, and have fun creating some quality content for the web. You may decide to get your own domain, and maybe even start a business! Good Luck!