Webwriter: HTML Help

Last page update: October 28, 1998

Having mastered the art of Webwalking with the browser, you may decide to add to the Web yourself, to become a Webwriter or page author. The Web provides unprecedented power to share your completed and developing compositions from a wide variety of media and interact with others about their impact.

  1. Creating web pages used to require quite a bit of knowledge about HTML (hypertext markup language) to control the layout of your web page. Several programs have now arrived that automate this process, so that like current word processors, you never see the hidden codes creating the special effects of your page layout such as center and boldfacing. Netscape Communicator 4.0 has an excellent editor built in to the browser and should be examined first to see if it meets your needs. Other products such as Adobe PageMill and Claris Home Page carry out this function well. The directions below begin with the assumption that you do not have these newer tools or that you want to learn something about HTML to better understand what the newer programs do for you automatically.
  2. You will need a web server, a computer that will serve as host for the web pages that you create. This could mean either finding someone whose system will do this for free (e.g., your institution may maintain its own web server or other means) or paying for account space with some Internet Service Provider. It could also mean becoming a webmaster and running your own web server software on your own computer. Free, shareware and commercial products and training are available.
For more comprehensive study than provided by the links below, look or search for citations on HTML in libraries and the Amazon Online Bookstore or browse the Internet Book List. You will find an extensive array of texts for all levels of Web author ability.

Coursework on web development and related topics is taught every semester as a part of a more comprehensive course on Computers in Education for educators. For those at some distance from campus there is a summer residency/post-residency program, spending 1 week on campus and then the rest done from home.

Follow these steps below for a basic introduction to web page development.

Sub-Sections

I. Select and Obtain HTML Editing Tools

This is an area of very rapid change and comparisons date quickly. Below are places to obtain public domain or shareware HTML editors. Further links are provided for some of the major commercial HTML Editor products.

II. Create and Organize Basic Web Pages

  1. Concepts in Web Page Design from the Design and Publishing Center web site.
  2. Begin the editing of basic web pages. Create a folder on your diskette called Web. This folder should hold all of your web page files. Expand on this work and link the other web pages you develop.

III. Move Your Web Pages to your ISP (Internet Service Provider)

  1. Use WCU's Vax Web Server: Electronic Global Publishing of Web Pages for University students.
  2. Public domain and shareware software sites can found on the Internet from which you can download applications for your personal computer or off-campus computer-telecommunication needs. Here are two for Macintosh and Wintel platforms, but there are many other such sites. Use a program for your computer platform to transfer files from your diskettes to the remote server's hard drive (e.g., Mac - use Fetch; Wintel - use WS-FTP). If using WCU's Vax computer to host your web pages, use Telnet capable programs to reach the Vax computer and manage your web page file permission (available on both Mac and Wintel platforms).
  3. Test all links to all of your pages and to remote web sites.

IV. Add Color and Imagery that Support your Web Pages

For further image and clipart web pages, use web page search engines to hunt for more with these terms: free, clipart, icons, animated clipart, banners, backgrounds, tiles.
  1. Make an image and place it on your web pages. Use the image digitizing skills to capture images from several types of technology: digital camera, digitize videotape, scanner.
  2. Color Taste Test
  3. Color Maker
  4. Selected 3.0 Examples
  5. Pam's Free Backgrounds, Banners, Clipart, Etc.
  6. A+ Art
  7. Index to Clipart Sites
  8. Icon Bazaar
  9. TextureLand
  10. Dr. Black's Animated Clipart Library
  11. Original Animated GIFs

V. Advertise/Market/Register Your Site

  1. Submit It
  2. Cheap Quickie page registration
  3. wURLd Presence, page registration

VI. Scan Other Reviewed Self-Teaching Resources

VII. General Resources

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