
 HomePage Hints

                    Tips on Setting up Remote Web Pages

                       Copyright 1995  by Jim Plumb

 About six to seven months ago I was invited to set up a home page for
 WindoWatch. At that time I didn't know a home page from a home body.
 The Web was taking off at an incredible rate, as it still is, and I
 figured I might as well get in on all the fun.. In truth, I didn't have
 a clue on how to go about making a web page, much less putting it on an
 Internet Service Provider's computer miles away.

 Homework
 That's what you need to do. Look at a lot of pages. Save the ones you
 like to disk and create a collection. Visit the original Web site, the
 CERN particle lab in Switzerland at http://www.w3.org.  I can remember
 what that was like in the beginning. "Hey, I'm in Switzerland now!"
 They have many of the tools you'll need to make web pages. Another
 excellent resource in this country is Bob Allison's Web Master page at
 http://gagme.wwa.com/~boba/masters1.html. This guy HAS done his
 homepage homework. Get an HTML (HyperText Markup Language) reference of
 some kind, a book or an online reference. There is a very nice freeware
 package called HTML Library available at
 ftp.swan.ac.uk/pub/in.coming/htmlib/htmlibXX.zip, where XX is the
 version number, currently 1.1a.  Most browsers these days, at least the
 ones running on MS Windows support the tags used in HTML level 2.
 Analyze your saved web pages and see what all the codes do.

 We're assuming in this article that you have a dialup account although
 what I'm going to say is applicable to people directly on the Internet.
 When you opened your Internet account, you probably got a software
 package which more than likely included a Web browser, a Mail program,
 a Newsgroup reader and an FTP client.  Probably, you connect with a Web
 server running some flavor of Unix. Of these, the Web browser and FTP
 client are the most important in creating Web pages for remote sites.
 You'll also need a text editor of some sort. These are the minimum
 tools required.

 You can also get one or more commercial/shareware/freeware HTML editors
 readily at hand. The site at http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/ has links to
 many of the tools available. You can also check the site at
 http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/Software/WinMosaic/HTMLEdit.htm for more
 links.

 Simple Web Tools/Editors
 For beginners, I suggest you get a copy of WebWizard, either the 16- or
 32-bit version (ftp://ftp.halcyon.com/local/webwizard). This piece of
 software borrows from the Wizard interface Microsoft uses in Windows
 95. It prompts you for items you might want included in a web page.
 Things like title, background color, text items, bulleted list items,
 graphics, etc. From there you can flesh out the page with whatever you
 need. When you save the file, make sure you give it the extension .htm,
 or if you use Win95 you can give it an .html extension. Another way to
 get started is with Internet Assistant, a free add-on to Microsoft Word
 for Windows 6.0 and a 32-bit upgrade to use with Word 7.0 . Internet
 Assistant gives you the ability to save Word documents as HTML
 documents. You can also use it to toggle Word between edit mode and
 browse mode. Very interesting software. There are other useful tools
 but I mention these two because they are easy to learn and require no
 knowledge of HTML to get you a place on the Web. An excellent HTML
 editor is Hotmetal by SoftQuad, Inc.

 Once you get a basic page, use whatever tools it takes to get the page
 looking as it should. Use your browser to check for errors. In fact
 some HTML tools have a push button or other facility which calls your
 browser to check it out. The final test is call it up and check any
 links you've put in it.

 Once you're ready to share your page with the world, use your FTP
 client to get it to your web site. Usually your Internet Service
 Provider has provided you with disk space for a directory for all your
 web pages. After you understand that this is a simple two way transfer
 the procedure becomes very obvious. The support person at your site
 should help you figure it out.

 The current Windows FTP clients make file transfers a breeze. I use the
 freeware FTP client WS_FTP. It opens up, ready to configure a
 connection and a sub-directory on your computer. Add the host name of
 your web site, your id and password, click connect and you're there.
 Of course you would have already logged on to your SLIP or PPP account.
 Use the right side to change to the web directory on the host. Use the
 left side which displays your sub-directory of choice to select your
 web page file, and then press the arrow pointing to the right side to
 transfer the file.

 If you can't FTP to the site or you can't get an FTP client program,
 you can use a comm program to manually logon to the site. Dial it up,
 logon, and go to your web directory. If you're not familiar with Unix,
 use the cd command as you would in DOS, and use forward slashes instead
 of backward slashes. Example: cd www/html ENTER. Here's a little tip!
 Let's assume you want to call your homepage MyBigHomePage.html. Of
 course you can't call it that on your PC but you can using Unix. Your
 page is named homepage.htm. What we're going to do is create a
 "symbolic link" between homepage.htm and what you want to call it. Type
 ln -s homepage.htm MyBigHomePage.html. You can refer to
 MyBigHomePage.html but it will call homepage.htm.

 Creating a Web page is not all that difficult provided you do your
 homework and have your tools, and of course, an idea  that's good
 enough to want to share with others.

 Have fun!


 Jim Plumb is a contributing writer and has been with WindoWatch from
 the very beginning. He not only did the original homepage for WindoWatch
 but is also our resident Acrobat guru... Jim can be reached by Email at
 jplumb@user1.channel1.com






 
                         ww


