LETS MAKE A WEBPAGE.
by 
Zeenath Jahan

It is sometimes difficult for people new to the 'Net to find 'more-basic-than-basic' instructions when they decide they want a Home Page. Some questions are not even addressed as it is taken for granted that everyone knows the answers. I can see this can be very confusing for newbies. 
Besides, all the online tutorials that I have found are in English; that again might pose problems for people who are not very proficient in the language.
Someone sent me email recently asking which server he should use which would be free and allow him to have more than one page on his website. The question set me thinking and I decided to write down some basic information that might help people faced with a similar problem.
First, about servers offering free space and free web-based email addresses. Most web-hosting servers are free because they earn from the advertisements they exhibit on Homepages. Most offer free email addresses with the web space, while some only deal in free web-based email addreses. 'Web-based' means you check and reply mail while online, POP3 means you can download the mail to your system. I am sure everyone knows of www.hotmail.com, but check out http://www.mail.com/ for some kool email addresses. I have zeejah@journalist.com though I don't use it at the moment, since I am too lazy to check my mail online.
All free web-hosting servers offer space where you can set up your Home Page, but some give more space and others less. For example, Tripod.com offers 11MB free space, (you can increase it to 22MB if you pay for it). Freeservers.com, on the other hand, offers 20MB, free. Obviously, the more space you have on the server, the bigger your website can grow. By the way, it is a good idea to set up your Home Page on at least two servers. In case of a server breakdown on one site,the other will have all your files intact and you won't become suicidal. As an added incentive,Freeservers.com will copy all the files from another homepage (your own, ofcourse) for you. Some servers give a domain name for your URL, for example, my website on freeservers.com is http://www.zeejah.8m.com . On the other hand, tripod.com gives a tripod URL plus a domain name URL as a redirecting address. For example, on tripod my homepage URL is: 
http://members.tripod.com/~zeejah/ 
and the redirecting URL is http://www.zeejah.attripod.com/ ,the redirecting server crashes sometimes, but nevertheless, a domain name is nice, it is more 
personal. 
Once you register with a server you will find that they help you make the index page. There is the 'Quick site builder' on freeservers.com and a wider variety of software to build your pages on Tripod.com. This is not to say that you cannot write out your own pages, index and others, uploading them to your site when you are through. Your homepage will be unique if you take time to first think about a 'theme' around which you are going to build it. A reason for it to be on the 'Net. This can be anything that you are good at and want to share with others. It can be a hobby, music, grafics or anything else.  Most webhosting servers offer free guest books, counters, net stats and lots more. You should 
take time out to check what they have to offer before you scour the net for them. Besides the icons etc that the server offers, you can download free buttons, backgrounds, icons etc from http://www.htmlgoodies.com . I found this a very useful site when I was building my website. Besides the other goodies, Joe Burns offers tutorials and solutions to many problems faced by webpage builders.
The first page on any web site has to be titled index.htm or html (as the case may be), as it is this page that search engines (for example yahoo and altavista) look for. Critical key words in the meta tag ofcourse gives your pages a better chance to be accessed by a search engine. The keywords are words that describe what you have to offer on your homepage.
Once someone accesses your index page you can then direct them to wherever you like, whether to another page on your own website or another site on the World Wide Web. If it is a page or a grafic file on your own website that you want them to visit you will first have to upload these to your site. Most sites have their own file managers; tripod's file manager allows you multiple uploads, which ofcourse is less time consuming. 
To upload, download and edit files on my websites I use a software called Cuteftp. Tripod offers its members a registered version of Cuteftp. You can also get the latest version of Cuteftp as shareware from http://www.tucows.com , http://www.nonags.com , www.globalscape.com or any other site that offers software. 'Shareware' means that you can use it free, but only for a certain 
period before either some features are disabled or the software stops responding altogether. I like Cuteftp as it has an html editor that is pretty good. If you use an html editor you will have to put in any text or grafics on the page after the <body> tag. While setting up the FTP sites on Cuteftp you will have to put in your site label (to make it recognizable to yourself), the remote address and your password and login. 
For example, the site labels for my websites are "Zeejah's Garden" and "Zeejah's Desk"; the tripod remote address is ftp.tripod.com , while the freeserver remote address is your site's URL. 
For example, the ftp address for Zeejah's Desk on freeservers.com is zeejah.8m.com. The 'user ID' is your login name and the password is the same you used when you registered at the server. 
Once you have set up the site all you have to do is click 'connect'. Once connected to the server you click on the file you want to upload, then on 'upload'. Cuteftp does the rest. You can also click on many files and put them in the queue to be uploaded or downloaded. While you chat with your friends, Cuteftp will do the job for you.
When making web pages you must remember that some codes are not visible to Netscape and some are not visible to Internet Explorer, especially the older versions of both browsers. Therefore, you should check your pages with both major browsers if you want all the goodies you add to your page to be visible to anyone who visits it.
Obviously you will want to have more than one page on your website. To add links to the other pages you will need to add some html code. For example, suppose you want visitors to go to a page you have saved as second.htm, the link pointing to it will be:
<a href="second.htm">go to</a> the next page.
the "go to" which is between the <a href> and the </a> will show up as an underlined URL on your page, </a> tells the browser that the URL ends here. In case you don't like underlined URLs, there is a javascript that will suppress it, but I guess it is best to allow it to be there so that people know it is a link.
In case you want to put in a link to another website the html code will have to include the complete address of that website. For example:
You must visit <a href="http://www.zeejah.8m.com">Zeejah's Home Page</a> as it is the coolest site on the 'Net....;)
Ofcourse you will want to give the visitors to your site some means of contacting you by email, even if only to say that your site is 'kool' or that it 'sux'...:) The html for that would be, for example:
<a href="mailto:zeejah@usa.net">Mail me</a>
If you want to put up an image file (whether a pic of yourself or an icon, button, background etc), the html code would be:
Here is <img src="me.jpg" width=20 height=22 border=0>my photo</a>
If you are putting up many photos on a page it is best to put up thumbnails, they load faster and your visitors have the choice of enlarging what they want to see.
For buttons or icons of any sort it is best to add the width and height according to how big or how small you want them to be. A grafics software will generally tell you the sizes. In case you do not want a coloured line around your button or icon add border=0 to the htm code. 
Maybe you would want to add a music clip or a recording of your own voice welcoming the visitors to your site? For example if it is a midi file called whatever.mid and you want it to go on and on while the page is being viewed you will have to add the following code:
<bgsound src="whatever.mid" loop="infinite">
<p><embed loop="true" src="whatever.mid" autostart="true" volume="100%" content="small console"></p>
This code should take care of both Netscape and Internet Explorer. In case you don't want the file to continue to run on and on driving your visitors crazy, you can cut out the 'loop="infinite" and the embed loop="'true' and put just embed src="whatever.mid" etc.
When you are done, and all the webpages are uploaded to your site you can register with http://www.atomz.com and ask them to check out your pages. Atomz.com will notify you of any errors and dead links it finds. Webhosting servers give a choice of search engines where you can submit your Home Page so it is easy for people to find it.
Let me tell you something that you might find helpful, if you come across a website that has some interesting features you can check the source code from your browser to see how they did it, for example, on Internet Explorer click on 'View' and then 'source' to see the html code of the page.
Once your Web page is all done and you have got all the basics right you can add java script galore by registering at http://www.javascript.com and make your site really hop, but first things first, don't be too ambition in the beginning. First learn the basics and THEN embellish your site, but make sure you don't make it too slow to load, not everyone has a fast ISP.