How to Create a Web Page

Your Page

How To Create a Web Page

Your Web page will be your personal place on the World Wide Web. It may be designed to include information about you, your family, your interests, or anything that you want it to be.

Web pages are designed to be displayed in a browser window. The information may be on a server connected to the internet, for example one provided by your Internet Service Provider (ISP), or one here at Kennesaw State University, or even your own home computer acting as a server. The browser can display Web pages on your computer even if you are not connected to the internet.

The Basics

Web pages, or for that matter, anything that can be displayed in a browser window, are written in Hypertext Markup Language, or HTML. Hypertext means the ability to link sections of one page to another page by creating a link between the two. You can link words in one of your hypertext documents to a glossary or dictionary, for example, either from a page on your “Web site” or to other Web sites. This feature provides you with a great deal of power!

How do you write the HTML to create a Web page? Well, for this class you need to know the HTML language and conventions, so you can compose your html using a simple text editor. Later on for other classes, you can use Web authoring tools which use a graphical user interface (GUI), allowing much faster development by the use of pre-defined Web page elements, such as buttons, titles, labels, etc. A third way you may want to explore in later courses at KSU is to write the Web page using your word processor, if it has the ability to save your document in HTML format; i.e., “save as” “.html”. Using the word processor, you can use bold type, different fonts and sizes, and even embed graphics.

The Content

Your Web page can contain virtually anything you want it to. You can include text, graphics, links to other sites, the ability to navigate within your own site by mouse clicks, and even animation and interaction with your “audience”. Through the use of the proper tools (and your growing experience) you can make your interaction with your audience very sophisticated, providing them with useful capabilities, as well as information. Using programming languages such as Java, you can provide “applets” on your page such as mini-spreadsheets, that actually run on the user’s computer.

Watch out what you put up on your web server since it will be out in public and anyone with a web browser will be able to seewhat you publish there.

The Look

A distinctive look and feel is very important to some Web page creators, while others prefer the simplest way possible to convey information. You can design elaborate backgrounds, custom titles, active content, flashy animation and sound. Your ability to design is limited only by your imagination…almost. The more complex your content and design (especially graphics) the more bandwidth you will consume. This translates to the speed that your pages will appear on the users’ computers, which is an important consideration with today’s modem speeds.