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How to build your first website - part 2

Adding Content:    

• Adding Text.
  With the mentioned WYSIWIG editors you can add and format text in the same way as you do in you favorite word processor like MS Word for example without having to worry to much about HTML (Hyper text markup language) For a good layout on web pages we use tables (some of those editors mentioned make it easy to insert tables and format them in size and color) you can use tables to order text and graphics layout visible and with borders or invisible and without borders etc. For a primer on manipulating text in HTML see this tutorial and for tables in HTML see this one. The webpages will be saved in the html file format and once prepared locally we need to upload them to the hosting companies web server.

• Adding Graphics.
  In the same way as we do in the word processor we add also the graphics here on the web pages and keep them either in the same folder as the html files or create a folder called images from where we access those files, remember those image files need to be stored the same way as the html files on the server (computer) that is accessible to the web, so we need to upload those the same way. The formats for graphics used on the web are mostly .gif (for line graphics)  and .jpeg (for photos).  Try to resize and compress the graphics as much as possible so they will download fast and not make your pages slow to download, also try not to overburden your pages with to many graphics, in good design less is often better. For more on graphics see this tutorial.

             

• Making Links.
  We can link up text or graphics to point to other web pages on the same site or other web pages on the web. Most editors let you insert the links with ease, just highlight the text or the graphic you want to link and click on the insert hyperlink button in the toolbar (probably a button that contains a little chain icon) and a new window opens where you can place the url of your external link or the file name of your own webpage in your site you want to link to. See this tutorial on more about hyper-linking.

• Adding Forms.
  The webpage editors will let you also add forms to your web pages so you can collect information that the visitor to your site can submit, this make the page more interactive and is important if you want to have feed back from your visitors. See this tutorial for more about forms.

• Adding special effects.
  There is a great number of special effects we can add to our web pages using java applets, java scripts, flash or dhtml. Just as mentioned above with the graphics dont overdo it and use those effects where it makes sense only, after all you might y not want your webpage to look like a blinking Christmas tree ;) You can find some great effects here at DynamicDrive.

 

How to build your first website - part 1
How to build your first website - part 2
How to build your first website - part 3
How to build your first website - part 4
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