|
|
||
|
|
Despite what you might think right now, web pages really are simple. They can be very complicated too, of course, but not all of them are. I would like you to do this little exercise. It will help you get over any fear related to HTML and making web pages. You'll learn the most basic HTML that's required for a web page and how to make your own little web page in Notepad (or any similar text editor). We'll use the web page you create later on when learning how to work with FTP.
Step 1: Open Notepad or your text editor of choice. On my computer Notepad can be found under Start Menu > Accessories > Notepad.
Step 2: After you open Notepad, go to File > Save As
Step 3: Save the file as hello.htm on your Desktop. Just type hello.htm as the file name.
Step 3: Some Basic HTML This is what your work space looks like:
The very first thing to do is declare that this is an HTML web page. You define this with HTML "tags". Anything in HTML that is enclosed with carrot characters is a "tag". It looks like this:
Every tag has a "closing tag" which is created with the slash character. This signals the end of the tag. In this case, it shows that all of the HTML is now at an end.
The first part of every HTML web page is the Head. You define this with Head "tags".
The slash character denotes the end of the Head tag, signaling the end of the Head part of the web page. The head tags go between the HTML tags.
Inside the Head tags, you should have a Title tag. This tells the browser what to display for the title of the web page, and it goes between the Head tags. It looks like this:
The Title of your web page will be "Hello!"
For now, that's all you need for your Head section. Next is the Body of the web page. That's where everything that actually appears on your web page is created. This goes after the </head> tag, but before the </html> tag. It looks like this:
Next we'll put a simple message between the Body tags that will appear on your webpage. First we should declare that we're going to be using a paragraph of text. You can do this with Paragraph tags. It looks like this:
We can write a sentence between those Paragraph tags. Let's write, "Hello, world!"
Important: Save your file right now. Go to File > Save. This is all you need for a very simple webpage. Now you can view it in a browser to see what you've created.
Step 4: See your web page Open up a browser. I'll show the process with Internet Explorer, but it will be very similar with any other browser. First, go to File > Open
Click the Browse ... button:
Find hello.htm on your computer. If you saved it to your Desktop as instructed, that's where it will be.
Click the OK button:
Now you see your web page:
Congratulations! You've created a real web page. It's not on the internet yet, but it's still a web page and it was written in HTML. You could even say that you programmed it.
Next: Step 7 >>
|
