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Since the World Wide Web became accessible, people have been putting up their own personal web pages that express themselves, as individuals, or as part of a collective. From pages about families and pets to pages on tutorials, the individual has done more to propagate web use than any business has, and 99% of the time, it has absolutely no commercial value. People just want to communicate. Because people like to share their ideas or find an outlet to express themselves, more people have been inclined to create their own websites. These are called Homepages. "What's your homepage?" means "What is the web address where you post stuff on the web?" A lot of people have Geocities accounts or Yahoo accounts or some such thing. Some people use their own account that comes with their ISP, such as members.shaw.ca/~username. Others create a domain name for their site, which entails spending roughly $50/year (perhaps a bit less, perhaps a bit more) on registering your name and paying someone to store your files so that the site is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. These are domains such as: Mark's site or Janra's site. I should point out that these are random pages belonging to people I've never heard of before. But you see the idea. Someone has something in mind and submits it to share with the world.

But there's the rub: How do you create a website? If someone gave me a pencil and said, "Draw me a picture of a pool with a ball floating on it under a bright, sunny day," the results would be a lot of stick figures. I do not have the capacity to draw something so complex. So if someone gave you an HTML editor on your computer and said, "Make a web page," could you? It depends. If the editor was called "notepad", most people would stare at it blankly, much like me and my gleaming pool. But if someone gave you tools to help build a site, chances are the results would be spectacular in comparison to a blank, white text file. The question then becomes: Why put up a website?

Why, indeed. A number of people have said, "I want to put up a website," and had no idea why they wanted to. Without a why, there is no how. Not everyone needs or requires a website, so if this isn't something you have felt you could use to your advantage in some form, then don't pursue it. I've seen the coolest gadgets on Canadian Tire commercials and I've always thought of how cool it would be if I could use them in just that very circumstance. Overcome the potentiality of defeat with the new Mastercraft tool that I only paid $59.99 for! I haven't bought one yet because I have no purpose for it. Without purpose, there is no use. Some people put up web logs of the goings-on in their life. This name has been contracted from "web log" to just "blog" for some people. Frankly, I'm just fine saying "log" but who am I to attempt to curtail the preferences of the masses? So, web logs are the purpose for some people. Do you have a purpose?

If no, fret not! Read on and some idea may inspire you. Or you may know someone who could use this information and won't they just be pleased if you found a way for them? If you have, beautiful! There are a few things to keep in mind with web pages:

• They don't create themselves. It takes effort to make them. How much effort depends on a) how much you know and b) what you want to do with the page
• All web pages are rectangular. This may sound funny, but you will not see a page that is not rectangular in shape. The images inside the page may have various shapes, but as things currently stand, they are quite 2 dimensional.
• More often than not: Less is more. In the early days of web page making, people used those cute animated icons all over the place! "It's amazing, look at them move!" Well... we're past that now. Time to use substance over flash!
• Speaking of flash, you may have seen some of those really cool sites with animation that used Flash! Here's an example: Gabocorp has been one of my favourite sites to demonstrate Flash since Flash's inception. They make beautiful graphics and have spent ages making their sites. There are classes you can take at community schools on how to use Flash, but don't expect to do this in your first week of self-teaching.
• There is copious amounts of information out there on how to construct a website from scratch using HTML code. If you use a search engine and type "html tutorial," you'll find a lot of sites that offer this for free. One such site is HTML Goodies. It's not easy to learn and to illustrate the point, you can see an example of HTML coding by clicking the image on the right. Remember, if HTML Goodies doesn't suit you, use a search engine, such as Yahoo or Google to find a tutorial site that works for you.

If you want to get your site up and running in the next few days, however, there are programs that do a lot of the work for you. The programs will be listed, followed by a little on what to do with them:

• Netscape still puts out a browser based on the Mozilla browser. But it comes with, among other things, its own editor called Netscape Composer. It's a pretty easy to learn program. In fact, you can even edit any website that you see and play around with it. If you view a website in Netscape, press Control-E. That will prompt the editor to open up, show you the website and allow you to edit it. Now, this just means you can copy someone else's work and publish it on your site. You won't be able to change the look of someone else's site. More importantly is that it will allow you to see how some things are set up in other sites. It will allow you to formulate your own ideas as to what might work for you.
• Trellian also makes their own editor. It is, as is Netscape's, made strictly for SEEING the page as you create it, so you know what it will look like.
• You can also download an editor by Amaya by clicking this link.

If you download any of these programs, one of the first things you may want to do is see if the program comes with templates. Play around with the templates and see what actions do what. You won't wreck anything, no matter what you do. You may disorganise the page, but you can always exit without saving the template.

It is often a good idea to try various programs if you don't feel comfortable with one. But remember, this may be entirely new to you. If so, I strongly suggest making a web page that is very simple at first. Try making a website with just words. Tell a story with several paragraphs and see how it turns out. Then try adding titles and change their colours. When you know what you're doing there, try adding some pictures and aligning them so they just stick to the right or left. Here's an example of a fairly basic, yet informative, personal web page:

Phil Loethen's Web Page

And here is an example as to what my first web page looked like. For me, it was a matter of providing information, and very little else. I don't think there's a right or wrong way to make a site, so long as it doesn't cause problems with other users' computers, or one's sense of aesthetics. For example, yellow text on a green background is just begging for hate-mail.

The most important thing to have is an idea first, then implement it. A lot of times, people will use a pencil and paper to design their web page, then the web page editors to implement the design. This is really recommended, as it frees your mind from the confines of options that you see in the software you use.

The last step, of course, is copying the files to the place that will be hosting your site. Whether it be your Internet Service Provider (ISP) or a place like Yahoo, they will have provided you with a name and password to transfer the files. To transfer the files, you can use a program such as Filezilla. It is a program that transfers your files (an FTP program, short for Files Transfer protocol) in very much the same way you copy files from a directory on your computer to another directory on your computer using the Windows Explorer. For more on how to do this, please see the previous article with instructions.

Whatever you do, take time to know your goal and to learn the little things that make this stuff work. Like anything else, the longer you work at it, the more of a pro you'll become. And if you're looking for that inspiration that can get you started, there's a whole whack of templates for free that can be found at Steve's Templates. Tons are free, some you can pay for, just because they're super spiffy. But if nothing else, they provide a lot of creative inspiration.

A lot of people use Microsoft Word and a lot of people spend a lot of time using Microsoft Word. So next week, a lot of people are going to read about a lot of keyboard shortcuts that could save them hours and hours (well... over the span of a few months or years, maybe). Instead of taking the time to stop typing, highlight an item, grab your mouse, aim it at a toolbar or to go the menus to select the option, then go back to typing again, you will be able to implement the option with a matter of two fingers in about .5 seconds and never touch the mouse. The keyboard is your friend.

If you have any comments, questions or concerns about this newsletter, feel free to e-mail me at sean@beggs.ca.