Thomas Laude's pages - Science de la matière et de l'énergie

Thomas Laude's pages - Science de la matière et de l'énergie

Make your own Web site when you don't know anything about it

Hello, hello,

For once, I have 5 minutes of my own. I will devote it to a useful thing: convince incredules that Internet is a child game. Sorry for true Web pros, basic shall be my talk. If you want more, you will find on the Web, thousands of ways to develop the subject. But, with this 3 times nothing, you can already become your own editor, and offer the world your latent creativity.

A Web page, what is that?
It is a file similar to a MS Word file (containing texts, tables, design code...) with, in addition, links (from a word or from an image) toward other files (another Web page, an image, or better, your own composition in MP3 format...).

The traditional format of Web page file is called HTML (the file name finishes with .html or .htm). The HTML is a language, which means that this file can be hand-edited like a text, but at first you don't have to try, it is a little difficult and useless for basic purposes. It is enough to edit the page with an editor, like "MS Word" (avoid if possible), "Dreamweaver" from Adobe, or any free WYSIWYG HTML editor. Save the file under html format.

How to start?
Not only is it easy, but in addition, it is very easy. Indeed, not only you do not need to edit the file with your hands, but in addition, you can shamefully get inspiration from the design of any other page on Internet. Just find a page that you like. However, avoid the pages in several parts (frames) which are outdated.

The editor:
Of course, you'll need about one or two days to get familiar with the editor, but frankly, it is much simpler than learning MS Word. You can write texts, insert tables, images (JPEG or GIF format mainly), attach links, put a back-ground (a color or an image), and also put info not visible to the visitor which will help the automatic searchers to find your pages. Note that images are not really inserted in the HTML file. The html page only makes a link towards the image file.
You will find on the Web quantity of free images and back-grounds for making a delighting design.

A site, what is that?
Making one page is fine, but in practical case, one rather makes a complete site. A site is a labyrinth of pages which link to each other, or to other needed files (images,...). A fundamental thing, there are two kinds of links towards a file: absolute and relative. The absolute link is an internet address, for example: http://yoursite.net/. In this case, no matter where is the calling-Web page, the visitor who uses this link this will reach your web site. For the other type of link (relative or local link), the address is indicated relatively to the position of the calling Web page: "in this directory", "in the uppper directory"... Concretly, absolute links are useful to get out of a site and local links to move inside a site. Advantage of a local link: You make your site on your computer. You order the files as you want, linking them to one another. Then, you can move your whole site as one folder, and local links are still valid.

Well, I rely on you to find a good site architecture. Do not forget that all files must be gathered (html, images, and all other files that you offer for download) in only one moveable directory. As for me, I prefer to gather all heavy files in a sub-directory, rather than to leave them with the html files, but tastes and colors... (Is that an idiom in english by the way?)

Final phase: Making your site accessible to everyone:
So, you have a site that you are the only one to visit, because it is on your computer and you cannot lend your seat to everyone. Thus, your files must be readable from distant computers. For that, computers must share a file transfer protocol, which is called "HTTP". Your personal computer accepts only part of this protocol. It is ok to take files from a distant computer, but about giving... it doesn't like it... (Does this reminds you someone?) Thus, they cannot be used as a server. You need to put your site on a big computer, accepting all the html protocol and having nothing better to do. In other wors, it is necessary for you to have a "provider".

No problem, it can be free at start, only will you have to chose. When you chose a free provider, don't forget to check if they put adds on your pages or not. You will have to register on-line to the provider's services, which means giving your identity, more, and to promise not to do bad things. (Well, you know...) Then, you can transfer (up-load) your site on their computer. They will give indications for this transfer, which will use either http protocol, or ftp protocol which is a faster and more convenient.

That's IT for today. The rest is up to you...

Thomas

---

¤ Main page

¤ About the author