HELP ME I AM NEW
HTML what is it? What is a source document?
| . | OK, you are now ready to use HTML coding, or at least interested enough to be reading this page. Don't worry, most of it is being able to cut and paste. And read source documents. All the examples used here are my pages so, I don't want to hear anything about the c word, [copyright] that comes to mind. I am not suggesting that you copy entire source document pages, only be aware that you should use them as an example, cheaper than buying the HTML Book and faster than creating a new page from scratch each time. If you are planning on by a reference book on HTML, I strongly recommend chosing books written by Laura LeMay who is not only technically proficient, but you don't need to be a rocket scientist to read it. She puts it in words that normal people, like you and I, can understand. And for those of you who want FrontPage, she has an excellent book out on it, complete with the disk. I got mine on the half off sale rack and was totally excited, as you don't need the NEWEST version. It worked perfectly fine for a beginner. Ready to learn a shortcut? Once you start using FrontPage or NoteTab, or any other webpage editor, you will notice that it does things that you really would like to do a different way, or add some text. You will need to know a little about HTML and how it works. You are browsing the internet and see a page that you really like something on it. You know that you will need to know the HTML which is on the source document, and don't want to ask someone how to do it. Well, armed with a little knowledge, here is what you do. Let's try it with a webpage of mine. We are going to go to [HTML 2 More]. Once you are on that page, right mouse click and the SOURCE DOCUMENT comes up. It looks like Greek huh? Don't worry. once you understand the basic information, you are set for life. Simple webpages have three sections, a heading, a middle, and an end. When you make a shell, normally you will copy the entire page to a new file, rename it, and use the heading and ending, and replace the entire middle. If you look at each of the help pages carefully, you will see that all the tops and bottoms of the pages are exactly the same, and the inside contents varies. I use the save as file, rename the file, delete the inside information, and re-edit as required, usually cutting and pasting from another page which already exists on my server. Not only does this saves you on editing time, but also allows internet viewers to know they are remaining in the same site. Experienced users will know they can look at the URL, but inexperience users rely on this type of page standardization to help them along. Most professional webmasters discard the thought of making each page different and opt to making a standardized shell. Also, as a beginner, stick to the simple pages first and learn as you go. Pages can also be made using tables and frames to get a certain look, and if you look carefully at my source coding you will see this site is constructed using tables due to the left side striping. A really advanced page may have multiple tables such as the [USC NROTC Alumi Pages] which I am proud to say I author. I do not use frames, as many servers do NOT support them, and my main purpose is to reach as many people as possible. For the next section, keep in mind that all the HTML is normally bracketed with < > but if I do that you won't see it, so for the examples I will use [ ]. That means, you just cut and paste it into < > and it will be usable code. In HTML for every code in < > there will be an end code also, signified by a so if you see [head] then look for [/head] - if you see a [a href] look for a [/a] and that is the end of the code. Below is the exmple of the source code: This is the heading section and all my pages look exactly alike - with the exception that I change the title, sometimes the meta coding, and the header. [html] [head] [meta name="author" content="Marcia Ann Kuehl"] [meta name="KEYWORDS"content="genealogy, genealogists, help, FTP, ftp, HTML, coding, webmaster"] [title] HTML 1 - HELP ME I AM NEW [/title] [/head] [body background="http://www.rootsweb.com/~wiwood/graphics/ALHN/bg-alhn.jpg" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000" link="#003366" vlink="#003366" alink="#993300"] [h1 align="center"]HELP ME I AM NEW HTML more? [/h1] [center][img src="http://www.rootsweb.com/~wiwood/graphics/ALHN/b-wc2.gif"][/center] Notice the heading section contains meta coding which does not appear on the webpage. To substitute the "author", you put your name where mine is. While the doesn't show on the webpage, but when someone goes in to read the coding, it identifies the page as yours. The meta code for "keywords" is used for search engines to pick up your pages, so put as many keywords that fit the topic of that particular page. If you used this coding as is, you would get the background with strip, and the page name, in this case "Help me I am New HTML More" centered above a stripe. That is my standard heading which I just copy, cut and paste, make a quick change to the header which [h1] stands for. If you want it smaller than increase the number size example [h2] [h3] ... here is a brief example: HELP ME I AM NEWHELP ME I AM NEWHELP ME I AM NEWYou can also change the alignment from center to left or right by substituting left or right for center. Are you getting the idea yet how easy this is? Next comes the center, which changes all the time, so I won't show that here... For more advanced HTML, either get a book by Laura Lemay, or wait until my next page [HTML 2 More] is up. Then comes the bottom, and as you might have guess my bottom starts at the line with the 5 county link indexes. Again, once it is made, I just copy, cut and paste from a file already made. If you wanted this look, you would edit the links to make them your URL links, change MAK in the copyright line to your name, and change the graphics link. What you need more help? (grin)... Lucky you, go to [HTML - more?] When in doubt, remember [email MAK ] and I will try to explain it better and update the site... to help the next newbee... which is where we all started, huh? |
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Revised: --Friday, 01-Dec-2000 17:08:16 MST
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