How to Build a Content Website – Part 2

SOFTWARE FOR THE WEB:

The basic language of the internet is called HTML (Hypertext markup language)

(Side Note:  Nowadays, there are different types of programming languages that people use to build webpages.  Dynamic pages can be built with ASP, JavaScript, XML and likely others. All of the 'custom' things (math pages, tracer pages, cards, bookmarks, etc) on our site are built like this. These are nice to strive for some day, but can't be done before you've mastered HTML so I'd ignore it for the time being).

There are a lot of software packages out there that give you a 'what you see is what you get' (WYSIWYG) view of HTML.  You don't have to know the language to use these packages.  You just point and click.  Here are a few of the software packages available:

MicroSoft FrontPage - this is what I use. It's likely not the best on the market, but it is a Microsoft product and works just like the others. I was very familiar with Word, Excel, etc. and the software is quite user oriented so this was a good choice for me.  Cost - about $150 US

Macromedia Dreamweaver - all of the 'real' programmers I've talked to say this is the best.  But, if you're not a programmer (I'm sure not), you may find it a bit harder to use.  Cost - about $400 US

Netscape Composer - this is a pretty basic package.  I used it for awhile before I took the plunge and bought FrontPage.  If you download Netscape, you'll have buttons along the bottom when using the browser or email.  The button to the far right is the composer. Cost - free

Notepad or a Word Processor of some sort - if you don't mind writing code, you can skip all the WYSIWYG software packages and just write HTML code from scratch.  Again, the cost is free.

OK, so since there are all of these WYSIWYG packages available does that mean you can ignore HTML?  Nope!

LEARNING HTML:

Why do you want to learn HTML? Well, you don't have to be able to write it in your sleep, but you should have a basic grasp of it. If you want to do anything fancy on the internet, including adding advertising to your site, you'll need to have some understanding of it.

My first 50 webpages or so were written in Notepad from scratch in HTML. It takes a lot longer, but you learn what can be done and what can't

I learned HTML from http://www.vu.org  They had a fairly good course which was free at the time (I believe it now costs $15 USD for 3 courses).

Since then I've found WebMonkey and like their courses as much.  They're still free.  They have a whole 'authoring' set of tutorials at http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/authoring/  Over time I've been through all of their authoring tutorials.  Some I did in great detail and some I just skimmed.  At the least, read through their Intro to HTML 

QUESTIONS TO ANSWER:

1) What software am I going to use?

2) What is a tag? (you'll know the answer if you've read the Intro to HTML course)