How to Get "Web Space" (skip)

 Choosing the right ISP to support your web page

You can, of course, use a commercial "free" web hosting site to build your site. However, if you prefer "commercial free" design allowed by using the free space provided by your local ISP, be sure use an ISP that can grow with your needs. Here are some concerns to consider when reviewing the quality of your ISP.  (These tips are adapted and quoted from a December  ZDNet's Anchor Desk article.):

"What's the modem-to-user ratio? No more than 10 users per modem is best." Busy signals and unexpected disconnects during downloads are common with higher ratios.

"Find out which broadband options are offered. Is DSL available? If not now, when?" Although your connect speed does not affect visitors to your web page, it does affect the time it takes for you to download software tools used to build web page features.

"Ask how many users they have and the size of their pipeline to the Net." A large number of users relative to the size of the connection to the internet backbone may hamper information information access or transfer rates.

"Who is the ISP's service provider?" More layers or bad layers may mean more problems.

"Is tech support and software provided? And are they available 24 hours?" ISP support for your design effort varies, but most ISPs help offers have limits. To a novice web page designer (or during connection problems), help online and software packages can make the whole process much smoother. They may help you locate and set up FTP transfer software (used to "publish" your site for viewing) or even provide setup help for design tools. However, detailed design help is unlikely. This web page design section of Tom's Library suggests a few self-help approaches for learning web page design, but it is not a substitute for hands-on help. If you need more, classes at your local college are often the best resource for an easy start.

"Find out about storage for your Web site. Expect at least 10 MB at no additional charge; and free or low-cost domain names" In the beginning, you will not need more than one or two megs of space (unless picture content is high and you don't optimize for download speed). However, your site may grow. Start with an ISP that allows room for reasonable growth without cost penalty.

Find out about bandwidth usage limitations. If your site is unexpectedly popular, a low bandwidth may shut your site down. (Unless you are incredibly popular, a standard 1 GB bandwidth limit should be sufficient for personal site access needs.)

"A note about cable modems: They may work great, but the cable company gives you little choice about Net service. That's supposed to change following recent court rulings. But until it's sorted out, you'll be forced to use the ISP the cable company chooses."

 How much should I pay?

Typical monthly rate for service that passes the criteria above (except for ad-buried free ISPs) is about $20 (standard 56k speed dial-up service). More limited access accounts (essentially enough for e-mail only) can be as low as $10/ month, but they are not appropriate for home page designers. DSL service (a specialized high speed phone connection) usually costs $49 or more a month for consumers (when available). Cable modem service runs about $40 a month (when available; additional specialized hardware and installation startup costs may apply.) Find out about pricing options before you sign up so you know exactly what you'll be paying.

Once these basic feature are satisfied, service is the most important difference between providers. (In some areas, service quality may even override feature and cost comparisons.) Local word-of-mouth helps in this choice; Internet surveys, like those by  Jesse's ZD AnchorDesk, can help with comparison shopping.

Free Web hosting

If your ISP doesn't provide free space with your account for a web page to fit your needs, commercial sites like Express Page provide web page space in return for the right to insert commercials within your posted design. Your web page space and development assistance is "free", but you "pay" by having advertising banners (sponsors) automatically included inside your page. (There is no such thing as a free lunch; if you don't mind the banners, its a good deal.)

Design support features on these type of sites may even lead you to prefer the use of free web hosts. Hosts often provide fill-in-the-blank web page setup. (This helpful feature insures that the ads they want are on your pages.) If your page content ambitions don't extend beyond a host's format, this approach is attractive. You can then skip all of the rest of the material posted here on web page design. You don't need it.

Basics: Making Your first Web Page

What makes a web page? All web pages include viewing instructions written in a language called HTML. Normally, you never see this. Browsers are designed to read these instructions, then translate them into the pages you see in your browser. (You can view the raw code for this, or any other, page by clicking view, then page source in your browser.) However, for the beginning web designer, life does not need to start this complicated.

Don't learn HTML until after you have made your first page using an HTML editor. For purists, this is sacrilege, but, at first, HTML can be intimidating. If you avoid full featured editors at first, you can even use the code created by your own work to teach yourself how HTML works as you become more at-ease with page design. (Understanding HTML is important for developing advanced web pages that include  interactive JAVA features or fine-tuning page delivery.)

HTML editors make design automatic; they work like simple word processors. If you want to get more sophisticated later, you can learn to understand what is happening by looking at the pages automatically created by your editor program. (If you choose to start making pages with mid-featured editors, like Frontpage, or even an advanced editor like Dreamweaver, reading the code they generate makes learning-by-example harder.)

Simple HTML editors are free. Don't lay out cash for software until your skills are more advanced. Start with free HTML editors like Netscape Composer.

Composer comes free with any recent version of Netscape Communicator and, if you use it in "online" mode, Composer even supplies wizards and templates to help make your first pages look professional. If Netscape's Help files aren't enough, Montana State University has aComposer tutorial that makes it even esier to use this free tool.

Note:  Your free copy of composer opens from inside Netscape Communicator. If you are viewing this web page through Netscape, click on the farthest right bottom pen-and-paper icon (or key ctrl 4). A fresh white screen appears. Right click to open a menu of simple activities. Click page properties to give your page color, etc., then create your page the same way you use a wordprocessor. Feature controls are just a simple tool bar along the top of the screen, but they are enough to build your first web page.

FrontPage Express, from Microsoft, is also free. It comes with most Microsoft products; a free copy can be downloaded from Microsoft's update site if you download and install the (free) MS Explorer 5.0 browser on your system. FrontPage does not come with a tutorial, but the University of Sioux Falls has a good FrontPage tutorial that addresses that shortcoming.

Note: I don't favor FrontPage because Microsoft tends to add automation that makes transition to more advanced and independent design a bit harder. (Easy automation begins early; the need for a transition to understanding comes so late that resistance to "backtracking" is high.) FrontPage also automatically adds features that can only function through Microsoft's proprietary programs. Of course, this is not a problem if you never want to share your work with people that can't or won't use a Microsoft Explorer browser.

Other, inexpensive HTML editors are also available at nominal cost. As you get more involved in web page design, you can move up to these sophisticated commercial HTML editors.   Shareware editors, like Coffecup, offer strong capabilities and modest try-before-buy price tags. However, moving up isn't automatic. Unless you are managing a large web site or entering commercial work, free editors, combined with the tools referenced in these notes, may be enough.

Another approach skips the need for an HTML editor on your computer. Sitematic and Bigstep are probably two of the best examples of remote web designer sites. They use your input to generate your pages for you. Their remote software creates web features that might otherwise be unattainable during early stages of learning.

Full powered editors, such as MacroMedia's top-rated Dreamweaver, offer the most capabilities. (I could never justify the expense.) However, until you are ready for heavy-duty site design, full-powered editors are severe overkill. (Microsoft also has a full feature version of FrontPage that is less expensive, but, if you have money to blow on a high -end HTML editor, why not get the best?)

Naming conventions: You must name the opening or main page of your home page set "index.html". Names for sub-pages are not, to my knowledge, governed by any requirements, but some form of organization now avoids later confusion..  As the number of linked files that make up your site grow, poor organization makes it harder to update files or improve storage efficiency without ending up with site malfunctions. (Unless, of course, you paid for a HTML editor that tracks links and relationships for you.) This site, for example, names pages so that alphabetical sorting (usually) groups related pages together by first letters of page names. (For example, all of the pages for paper abstract popups in my page set start with the characters "ab_ . . .")  Larger sites even add sub-directories to help track structure. Images inside web pages, for example, may be separated and called from a unified subdirectory named "/pictures".

 

Learn by example: As you learn more about HTML, capture and annotate examples of functional HTML code to help  improve understanding.

Observe what works (and what doesn't) by looking at the HTML code for award-winning page design examples recognized at sites such as . You can look at the code supporting almost any web page by opening a page, clicking view in the browsers menu bar, and then clicking page source on the menu pulldown. A window opens showing the raw code. The code on advanced pages is often confusing, so it may take awhile before this is very helpful. (Note: If you want to get a glimpse of where your learning can lead, check out pages by the winners of the webmaster's contest! They take design farther than I ever expect to need, but this is a place to stretch your ideas of the possible.)

Review other people's learning experiences and take personal reminder notes. There is allot to remember. (I posted some of my notes in the next page of this Web design series.)

Don't try to get fancy until after you have got a basic page posted. You don't need to start with allot of bells-and-whistles.

HTML tutorials make it easy and practical to move beyond the restrictions of HTML editors. Several web sites offer online tutorials, including Builder.com's "Learn the Basics", Primeshops's Jump Start,  Dave Raggett's 10 Minute Guide to HTML , or Gordon Hake's W3 writer.  Each of these sites offer valuable learning opportunities, but I think one of the easiest "beginner tutorials" is Char's Web Publishing Tutorials on Delphi. Access appears to mandate joining Delphi by filling out a from, but access is free.

 

As you advance in HTML, quick reference guides to HTML code are useful. Useful reference guides include the Wilcam group's index of HTML tags, the W3C organization's HTML 3.2 Reference Specification recommendation,  or the University of Illinois HTML primer text at their  NCSA site.

 

Remember, Trial-and-error is another good way to learn. Many sites, such as Case Western Reserve University's HTML laboratory, let you experiment and view the results of new coding experiments.

How to Publish Your First Web Page

1. Confirm with your provider that your page space is prepared and waiting (or follow their instructions to reach this status).
2. Confirm that your web page design works! (before you post it) This involves opening your browser while you are offline. Click file, open, and then click the "choose file" button. Browse until you find the folder your web pages were saved in. Enter "index.html" (which should be the name of your opening web page) and then click the open button. Click open again, your new web page should now display inside your browser. If you don't like how it displays, go back to your HTML editor and fix it. Check all the links to your other pages to make sure they work. If everything works, your are ready to go to the next step!
3. Install and configure your web page transfer software.
1. If you used FrontPage to build your page and your ISP is FrontPage aware, you don't need a separate FTP program. (Automated posting can also be configured in Netscape, but it is not as comprehensive.) Consult your ISP for activation information. If automatic configuration and one-step transfer is supported by your ISP, publishing is very easy through Microsoft's Web Publishing Wizard. (This Wizard can be automatically located, downloaded, and installed using the Critical Updates Utility program in the Windows operating system. Note: If Windows is not configured to automatically use MS Explorer for operating system updates, the utility may not work as smoothly. )  You may need configuration information from your Internet Service Provider (ISP); check to see if they have this information for you before you start.
2. Other free page editors use a FTP program to post your page. (Commercial and shareware editors often have built-in upload capability.) Windows, I'm told, has a basic form of FTP software built in. However, it is usually better to use whatever variety of FTP program that your ISP supports. (That might make it easier for them to walk you through setting up page transfers.) The following is an example of the information needed to configure WS_FTP95LE, a FTP program which is free through my ISP:
Sample setup instructions: Before you start the program, dial into the internet. Then start your FTP program. It will open a session configuration window that is ready to be configured.
     The GENERAL session properties setup tab asks for the following information--

          > profile name: WS_FTP32 is my default from installation. Stick with your default (it may be different).
          > host name /address: enter the ftp client address supplied by your provider (i.e., something like  ftp.cyberhighway.net)
          > host type: Automatic detect is the default. I think this is OK for most systems.
          > user ID: enter your username as recognized by your ISP
          > Password: enter your account password (NEVER PUBLICLY RELEASE YOUR PASSWORD!)

         For most providers, this is all you need. Everything else can be left at default. The ISP adjusts the remote host information automatically based on that information. The initial local directory on the STARTUP tab should be set to the directory on your system that holds the web page set you wish to transfer to posting. However, you can browse your computer's directories to set this after establishing an Internet connection if you prefer.
 

4. Initiate transfer: Use the Host side of the program to browse and find the folder you store your web pages in. Highlight all the files (including image files) and click the arrow button pointing into the ISP directory approved by your ISP for receiving your page set. A sound will signal when all transfer is complete. Confirm that all the files transferred (i.e., match the host web page folder contents-- your computer), then close the program.
5. Go visit your web page; work with your ISP if you have any access problems. (Remember, in order for this to work, your opening page must be named index.html).

Next: Enhance your web site with more advanced features