Basics of Website Building
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The Basics of Building a Website
Outlining the Type of Website
Let us begin with the purpose of your intended website. The reason this must be thought out at the beginning is to enable you to plan for development. Depending on the purpose, it may also mean you have to do a lot more research!
For simplicity, let's assume there are three basic types of web site: the hobby site (this includes family sites, genealogy, etc.), the information site, and the sales site.
The Absolute Minimum Required
The absolute minimum requirement on a domain is an index page and a text editor such as notepad.
This will have the url: www.anydomain.com/index.html
When a browser locates a domain, it automatically searches for a page called, index.htm. If it cannot find index.htm, it searches for index.html, then index.php, unless the server has been specially configured to do something else.
If index.htm is unavailable, the browser will display the contents of the folder in tree form as a set of hyperlinks to whatever is contained within it.
Index.htm or index.html is therefore, your most important page. It can be as short or as long as you like. There are no limits or restrictions so long as it contains the basic html elements which tell the browser how to display it.
To give you an idea of just how simple HTML is, I have created a page called the-most-basic-webpage.htm (opens a new window). To create the page, I used:
<html>
The text I wanted to display
</html>
That's it! Written in Notepad and saved as a .htm file. Try it!
If you are not sure how to do that, save it as a text file (.txt), then rename it using the .htm extension.
Example: your-web-page.txt = your-web-page.htm
Here is another example of using headings (opens new window)
HTML Tutorials
It is not my intention to delve into the underbelly of HTML here, only to show you just how simple it is to create a web page. If you would like the text versions of those 2 pages, click on the link: Example 1, Example 2.
Please note that a properly structured web page has a little more code in it than I've used in the examples but they do show just how easy it is to create a basic page.
If you would like free tutorials in ALL aspects of web programming, including HTML, then the place to go is W3Schools. Enjoy!
Next: Types of Website
| Choosing a Web host | Domain Names | Web Hosting | FrontPage | Server Side Includes | Web Authoring Software | Graphics Software | What NOT to Do | Seeking Inspiration | The Basics | Types of Web site |
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