Introduction

This page contains some very basic information on setting up a web page. My intent is that it would be enough to get you off to a very basic start, with a simple page or two working. After that it's up to you to persue other sources of information on the web (and there are many!). I've found that learning by example is the most efficient way to pick up new techniques. I'm not going to deal with web page editors - only with writing web pages directly (using HTML).

The first thing you need to do is to become familiar with how to 'load' a page into your web browser (.e.g., Netscape). Typically it is done by specifying the location to the browser as a file. For example, on a Unix system (which doesn't have a concept of different drive C, D, etc.) it would be specified as: 

   file:/usr/robc/my_page.html

Where "my_page.html" is a web page file. On a PC, which does use drive letters, it would be typically specified as: 

   file:/c:/web/my_page.htm

A Simple Example

About as simple a page as you'd ever want to get is the following. Copy this, exactly as it is, into a file call a_page.htm and try loading it into your web browser (as specified above): 
   IMPORTANT: In all cases, the "<" followed by the "-" should just be a "<"
              on it's own (i.e., do not type the "-" character).

   <-HTML>
   <-TITLE>Sample Web Page<-/TITLE>
   <-BODY>
   <-H2>Sample Web Page<-/H2>
   This is a sample web page.
   <-/BODY>
   <-/HTML>

This should result in a very simple page being loaded into the web browser. The page will have a title in bold with a line of text underneath it. The bulk of the web page itself is contained within the BODY and /BODY statements.

Including Links on Your Page

Including links to any other page on the web is relatively simple. The format for a link is as follows: 
   <-A HREF="...link...">Description<-/A>

The "...link..." is, of course, an actual link (the same way you would specify it in your browsers location field. So, for example, a link to this page would be specified as: 

   <-A HREF="http://www.magmacom.com/~robc/webstuff/webstuff.html">Rob's Web How-To<-/A>

It's as simple as that! The part between the "A HREF" entry and the "/A" entry will be displayed in a highlighted colour (usually blue) to indicate that it is a selectable link.

Learning By Example

Well, that's a very basic introduction to web page authoring. If you've gotten through this brief tutorial successfully then you should be well on your way to creating usefull and interesting web pages!

As I said above, I find that learning from example works best for me. In order to make it easy on myself I usually look for a page that has a relatively simple example of what I want to do and then I view the source (HTML) for that page in order to determine how it was done. This can be quite effective for the simpler techniques, but the more complex the constructs can be a little harder to puzzle out this way.

Well, that's it for the wirld-wind introduction to creating your own web pages. I hope you found it usefull...please let me know if it started you on the path at least. And most of all - have fun with it!


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