Hotkey North Shore
Internet
What a great idea to have your
own webpage!
It's today's way of making a definitive statement about yourself - like
the way you dress, or the car you drive, or where you live, or the way
you carry yourself - only it is far more versatile and more articulate
than any of those others.
Design ~ Style, Taste & Content
Please take some time to browse the 'Net and look with a critical eye at
the websites and webpages that you encounter. (You will find plenty of
hotlinks on our Client Webpages, Websites To Visit and Software To Go!
webpages!) Does this one appeal to your taste - is it elegant in design,
or vulgar, or tawdry, or just flashy? Is that one so full of gimmicks,
gee-gaws and gizmos that it conveys no coherent core message to its visitors?
Or is another one so loaded with heavy graphics that it takes forever
to download?
All of these - and much more - are considerations you must take aboard
when setting about to design your personal - or business - webpage. Consider
first what is your central communication, the message you wish to tell
the world through this webpage. Certainly you will need to have a fair
knowledge of yourself - or your business - to establish this critical core
concept. Once established, your next question is - how to express this
concept clearly in a way or ways that compliment and reinforce the message,
rather than detract from or distract from or lose or confuse the message.
Perhaps you could write a brief note about yourself - autobiographical
style. Or include things written about you by others - biographical or
endorsement style. Or you might care rather to be known by your views on
other matters - referential style. Or by the way you express yourself -
expressionist or verbalist style. Or you might be more comfortable with
images rather than words, and you could post a host of your favourite pictures
of yourself - album style. Or pictures you have made - gallery style. Or
an infinity of other styles - anything goes as long as you feel that this
truly expresses yourself - or your business - appropriately and
better than any other way conceivable.
Making your webpage
Once you have decided on the content and style, putting the webpage
together is relatively simple and easy. In Netscape Composer (there are
many other webpage composers - WordPerfect 7.x allows you to compose a
webpage exactly as you would a WordPerfect page - but we recommend Netscape,
and you keep downloading free upgrades!) open a New
Blank Page. Right button click anywhere on the page and select
Page Properties from the dialogue box
that opens. This allows you to select colours for the background and typefaces,
or you can select an image to `tile' as your background. You will see quite
clearly on the screen the combination of colours you select - just keep
experimenting until you get what you like! Then you can start inputting
your content - you can either type straight onto the webpage in Composer,
or you can `cut & paste' your text - and images - from another source.
To format text, highlight the relevant section, and using the drop-down
Style menu (white box, farthest left on the Type toolbar) you can select
a style to apply - headlines or list or bullet or whatever. Right of the
Style box is the Typeface drop-down menu where you can likewise
select a typeface for the highlighted text. Next right is the font size
menu, then the colour menu. Then icons for applying Bold, Italic and Underline,
next Remove All Styles - which does just that. Further right, icons to
apply bullet points to paragraphs, next point numbers for paragraphs, the
Reduce Indent, then Increase Indent, then Alignment. All just like conventional
wordprocessors.
To insert images, click on Insert (on the master toolbar) and then on
Image. Browse to your image file using the dialogue box that appears, select
it and select the alignment option required - text can go only one side
of the image, and only one line, aligned top, centre or bottom, unless
you select the Text Wraparound options. (More complex placements are available
using the Table tool, but you'll find out about that later for yourself!)
And so you build up your webpage.
Hotlinks
It is customary at the bottom of your webpage to have hotlinks to take
visitors back to your Index or Contents page (in multiple page sites),
or they can use their Back button to go back to whence they came. It's
also usual to have your email hotlink there, even though you do not need
to have your name on it. To make a hotlink, type some text -
Email me!
You then highlight that text, right button click on it and in the dialogue
box that opens click on Create New Link Using Selected (you can hyperlink
text or images); for your email link you type "mailto:" followed (no space
between) by your own email address. Then click OK or hit Enter, and it's
done. (Note that it changes to the colour you selected earlier in Page
Properties.)
Email me!
Difficult, huh? Other sorts of hotlinks work the same way - to refer to
another webpage on your own system, use the dialogue box Browse button
to locate the page file (xxxxx.htm or xxxxx.html) you want the link to
take the visitor to, then OK. Or cut and paste the URL (website address)
of a remote webpage into the same dialogue box, then OK. The links don't
work in the Composer, so SAVE your work, open the Browser and open your
page to test the links. (Of course the remote links won't work unless your
logged on to the 'Net.)
How to get your webpage found
Back in the Composer, right button click on the page background (in the
bottom right is best, for some reason) and open Page Properties. Enter
the filename you intend to save your work as, your name as author, a one-
or two-word description of the content, and - most importantly - under
Keywords enter the descriptors for your site.
These descriptors are words used to index the site for the various search
engines, so if you have `Elephant' as a descriptor, anybody world-wide
who enters the word Elephant into their search engine will be referred
to your webpage. And you can use as many words as you like, just keep the
words or phrases separated by commas thus : `Elephant, daisy, daisies,
sex, ...' and so on. See - simple!
Putting your webpage on the system
Once your page is ready, you will need to upload
it onto the Hotkey North Shore ISP server. This frightening-sounding process
is executed by a file transfer protocol
system, or ftp. Quite simply, you download an ftp - we recommend ws-ftp
available via Your Resources - and enter your protocols, user name and
password. When you launch ws-ftp, it will contact Hotkey North Shore's
ISP server; it displays two windows, on the left a directory on your computer,
on the right your allocated website directory on the ISP server. Browse
the left window to find the directory / Folder (which I suggest you call
`homepage') where you have your webpage and any included files, select
the files you want to upload, and click on the appropriate arrow to start
the transfer. It's slow enough, and when complete, you will see that all
your files are visible in the right window, on the server. You can then
close and exit ws-ftp, and use your browser to download your webpage from
the server - useful to check that all links are functional. And that's
that.
Your option ~ let an expert do it for you!
Well, them's the basics, with a bit of good advice about design and content.
If you don't feel game to do your own website or webpage, consult a professional
communicator to generate your message and / or a designer whose style you
like, who does not overwhelm or otherwise interfere with the message he
is supposed to be helping to convey. If you approve of the style and content
of these pages, please consider using The
Best in the Business to produce your website - terms are
on the hotlonked webpage and conditions on application.
Return to Main Page
Contact me -
Vincent O'Connor
Design by The Best in the Business