Chapters 3 and 4

Chapter 3 reviewed the basics of creating web pages. The beauty of creating your own web page is that anyone can view it from anywhere in the world from a computer, smartphone, gaming concole, or an MP3 player/iPod. Its very simple to do, especially when using web authoring software packages like Dreamweaver, FrontPage, Mozilla Composer, and NetObjects Fusion.

Although it’s easy to create a web page, good design is very important. One should be very careful with the layout of the page, fonts, colors, backgrounds, graphics, layers, and frames. The book emphasizes that if you are a beginner, that you should start out small and simple and build on things one you have more experience. It’s good practice to make the site easy to read and easy to navigate.

Table and frame are nice to use, but don’t overdo it. Tables and frames are often confused with one another, but can be easily distinguished by checking to see if the “frame” stays in the same place when navigating the web page. If the whole page moves, it’s a table, and if there are stationary areas on the site, it’s a frame.

Chapter 4 reviews how important it is to keep your web site well organized. To do this, you need to have a good layout for your file structure, and then stick to good naming conventions; use lowercase letters, use letters or numbers, never use a space, the web pages should always end it htm or html, don’t make the file names too long, and ensure that the correct file extension is used for the files.

It’s also good practice to use a naming convention for your files so that it’s easy to find and manipulate the files. Be consistent when creating folders too, and ensure that the web page is updated when renaming files and folders – you don’t want to have a web site with broken links!

Web sites are hosted on web servers, and they are usually maintained by ISPs and larger companies/organizations. A URL, such as http://gizmodo.com/5411442/the-best-gadgets.htm, contains the protocol (http), the domain (gizmodo.com), the folder on the server (/5411442/), and the thml file that the browser it looking for (the-best-gadgets.htm).

Many ISPs provide you with some web space to create your own web page, but sometimes the don’t provide much disk space, or the domain name and link is difficult to remember. It’s easy to just register your own domain, and it’s fairly inexpensive too. There are plenty of companies that sell domain names, such as Network Solutions, the Internic.net, and GoDaddy.com.

When preparing to create your web page you need to know your audience, you need to make an outline of how you think the site should look, and you should keep a folder with all of your materials for creating the site. Planning and organization is key to creating an effective web site.