|
|
|
Make a Web Site for FreeBy Francine Schwieder |
Most people get free web space from their ISP, but don't do anything with it because they don't want to spend the money for a program to build a site, and are quite daunted by the prospect of trying to learn to write HTML. You don't have to do either! You can use that space without spending a dime.
First you will need to make a plan/design for your web site, and then create the files you will need to implement this plan. The graphics can be made with your favorite image editing program, then saved as JPEGs or GIFs. OK--this might not be free, but most likely if you bought a printer or scanner, or got a software bundle when you got the computer, you do have some sort of free image editing program. Put your pictures in a folder called "images." Next create plain text files with all the text content you want. SimpleText works just fine for this. Remember: all the formatting will be done later. Put these files and the "images" folder in a new folder which you will now create. Call it something memorable, like "myweb."
Launch Netscape Communicator. I use version 4.6.1, which runs reasonably well in OS 9. Close or hide the resultant browser window. You won't need it for awhile. If you are running OS 9 make sure the Netscape you have is the one that was provided on the OS 9 CD. Otherwise you will run into problems. I updated Netscape just before I worked on this article, and it ran a few minutes, crashed, and flatly refused to run again. So I trashed it and all its preference files and went to the back-up copy from December, when I first installed OS 9, and everything was working just fine. You do keep back-ups of all your files, applications, and System Folder, don't you? If not, you are living dangerously.
Once Netscape is running, choose "Composer" from the Communicator menu. A new window will open, which you can leave as is for now. Go to the File menu and choose "Open page in Composer." Choose the first text page for your site, from the "myweb" folder. It will open in Composer. Do a "Save as..." right now, and call it "somename.html"--the .html extension is important! You can now add a title at the top, if you don't already have one typed in. Select it, then select something bigger than the default "normal." You can make it colored or underlined or whater pleases you by clicking the appropriate tool icon in the toolbar at the top of the window. You are now ready to add a graphic. Position the cursor where you want the graphic to be, including the alignment option you want. Now click the pict icon in the toolbar. Make sure the active tab is for Image. Now you can either type in the information (http://homepage.mac.com/francines/articles/images/name.jpg) or click the Choose File button. If you go for the latter it will put what is called "the full path name" in the location box. You do not want this! Be sure and delete everything in front of "images" from the path name. Now check the "Leave image at original location" box. It is considered good form to enter a brief text description in the Alternative Text box, brief as in a single short word, for people who are browsing with the image function disabled. Leave everything else as is--you can experiment later. Click OK. The graphic will magically appear in the window where your cursor was last blinking. Use the tools at the top of window to format the rest of your text, add more graphics, whatever. Save and close the window.
Make the rest of your pages. It is a good idea to include links to other sites on the web wherever appropriate. You don't want your site to be a dead-end. Select the text you want to use as a hyperlink. With the text selected click on the link tool (it is a miniature chain). The first box in the dialog box repeats the text, then you need to fill in the complete URL for the page you want to link to. It will be in the form of http://www.isp.com/whatever if it is an external link. Click OK. Be sure to check when you are online to make sure the URL actually works.
You are now ready to make an Index page. You can use the original blank window that opened when you launched Composer. Give it a title, such as HOMEPAGE, and format same. Save it. Call it index.html (most ISPs require you to have such a page). Now go to the Format menu and select Page Properties. You can make custom colors for your links and backgrounds, and even add a background image here. Don't bother to leave the image at the original location, because Navigator won't do that. Let it make a copy and put it in the same folder as the page is in. Click apply and OK.
One way to make a nice index for your other pages is to insert a table, with both thumbnail graphics and the page title. Position the cursor where you want the table to be, click the table tool. Make the number of rows equal to the number of pages you just made, and have two columns, one for the thumbnails and one for the text. Have a border width of 0, and put in spacing to taste. Make the Table width about 85% of the window. Uncheck Equal Column Widths, click the Insert button. Use your new skills to put thumbnails and titles in the little cell boxes. After you've filled the table, go back and select the first thumbnail, go to the Insert menu (not the tool!) and pick Link..., select the page you want to link to, click OK. Repeat. Save. Close.
Now go to your browser, select the File menu, Open Page in Navigator, and pick your index.html page. See how much of what you just did actually works. Begin trouble-shooting to find the errors and typos. Once all is working, you can upload the lot to your ISP, using Fetch--free wherever fine Mac software can be downloaded.
Once you have Fetch installed it is time to put your newly crafted web page up on the server at your ISP. Explaining how to use Fetch to do this should be fairly interesting, as I do not actually know how to use Fetch. I do use it, but I basically just stumbled around and learned how to get to my web space and what to do to upload and download files, and once I succeeded at my tasks I just follow the same steps over and over again.
First, launch Fetch. Now go to Customize-->Preferences. Type in your email address as the default password. Try leaving everything else at its default value. Go to the next tab, Download, and select a folder you want to use to place things in that you download. You can select a text editor from the list if you wish, although I haven't the faintest idea what this accomplishes. You can look at all the other choices offerred if you want, but I don't know what they do, either. Click OK.
We'll presume that you have already run Internet Configuration, so that you can get on the Internet. Phew. Glad I don't have to explain that!
Now you will want to connect to your ISP. Do whatever you do to get online. Personally, I always run the Remote Access control panel, because I like to be able to see if anything is actually going on by watching the little "Send" and "Receive" thermometer bars, which bob up and down when the connection is doing something. After you connect, launch Fetch, then select File-->New Connection. You will be presented with a dialog box, and the information you need to fill this out will come from your ISP. The host will be whatever they tell you, in my case it is ftp.tstonramp.com, my User ID is my email name, the Password is the one they assigned me. I don't have a directory specified, so I guess they didn't tell me I needed one. Unless you want to go through this each time you sign on, you should create a shortcut. You can do so in Customize-->New Shortcut. Enter the information discussed above. You must also give your shortcut a name. I wasn't very creative, and just named mine "Home Page." Once this is done you can go to your place after you launch Fetch by selecting Home Page in File-->Open Shortcut-->Home Page. The little Fetch dog will start running, and you will see a file list appear in the Fetch window.
This window is pretty primitive looking. At the top, with a drop down menu, is the directory you are in. Then a big box with the file list. Next to that are buttons for Put File and Get, then three radio buttons, the top most is Automatic, and I always leave that checked (seems to work fine). Next to this are some status indicators, so you can see what is happening.
When I get to the space on my ISP that I reach through the Shortcut, the top box says francine, and the list shows WWW. I double click the WWW and I am then in the "folder" where my web site is kept. If you open the folder on your hard drive where you have placed your web site, and have it display in list view, you can see exactly what you need to do: namely, move the files from the folder on your drive to the "folder" on your ISP. You can, and I do, simply place the two windows next to each other and then drag what you want to upload from the folder on your drive into the Fetch list panel. When you want to remove something from your web site all you need do is select it in the Fetch window, and drag it to the Trash can on your desk top. Fetch will inquire if you really want to delete it, if you say yes, it will then get rid of it. Before I update something I always delete the old one this way, then drag the new one into the Fetch window list. Works for me.
You can navigate through the folders on your site by double clicking the folder you want to open. Go backwards by selecting where you want to go from the little drop down menu. You can upload an entire folder, and all its contents, by simply dragging it from the window on your drive into the Fetch window and dropping it in the list. That's all there is to it!
Once you are comfortable navigating around your own web site, you may want to explore some other ftp servers. The advantage of using Fetch to download files is that if you lose your connection in the middle of a download (or, most frustrating of all, near the end of a download) Fetch can often resume the download where it left off. Netscape can't. Internet Explorer sometimes will. Fetch usually does. Most useful!
If you follow these steps you will be able to start calling yourself a web master. You can put the address of your web site on all your business cards and use it as part of your sig file in email. You have arrived--you are now a full participant in the new Digital Millenium. Aren't you proud?
And if you don't have a favorite place on the web to collect Mac software, you can try these:
To see the web site Jon Chaplin and Francine Schwieder built while doing a presentation of the above to a CHOMP meeting, click HERE. If they can do it while talkin' and jivin' before an audience, then so can you.