Frank da Cruz
Updated in 2019 and 2021 for HTML5 and "fluidity".
You can create a Web page on your desktop computer but nobody can see it but you. If your want other people to be able to see your Web pages, you need an account a computer that has a Web server. Nowadays most people have their own computers on their desks, but normally they don't have Web servers and anyway you don't want the whole world coming into your desktop computer to see your web page because (a) it's not designed for that, and (b) who knows what else they might see. And (c) for security reasons, Web servers should be managed by professionals. Most institutions have big central shared computers for this purpose, which usually have a Unix-like operating system such as Linux. You need an account on one of these so you can put your web pages there. If you don't have access to such a computer, you can get a low-cost account on a service like Panix.com.
You can still create Web pages on your own computer and look at them with your computer's Web browser, but for other people to see them, you have to upload them to the "big" computer that has the Web browser. The rest of this document is about how to create your first Web page.
When you're just learning and want to experiment, you can do everything on your PC. Create a new directory ("folder") for your website, and then put the web-page files (HTML plus any pictures) in it. Use NotePad or other plain-text editor (not word processor) on your PC to create your "home page", a file named index.html, which you can view locally with your Web browser. (You can also use word processors such as Word or WordPad if you save in "plain text", "text", "text document", or "text document MS-DOS format".) Later I'll explain how you can install your web site on the Internet.
Once you've made your "home page" (index.html) you can add more pages to your site, and your home page can link to them.
This sentence contains <b>bold</b> text.
produces:
This sentence contains bold text.
A Web page starts with a series of HTML commands, and ends with a few more. The contents go in between:
<!DOCTYPE HTML> <html lang="en"> <head> <META charset="UTF-8"> <META name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0"> <title>Sample Web Page</title> </head> <body>(Contents go here)
</body> </html>
The first line (DOCTYPE) specifies which markup language the page uses (HTML = Hypertext Markup Language); just copy this line. The next line, <html>, starts the page, and is matched by the last line, </html>, which closes the page. <head>, starts the heading, which contains a title to be displayed on the browser's title bar and a declaration of the character set (nowadays it should always be UTF-8) and the "viewport" line which is a compulsory adaptation for cell phones, "smart" watches, etc. </head> closes the heading.
The <body> tag starts the body of the document, is closed by </body> tag.
As you can see, most HTML commands come in begin-end pairs: <b>...</b>, <head>...</head>, etc. The closing part of the command has a slash (/) between the < and the first letter of the command.
Blank lines and line breaks are ignored. The browser automatically "flows" your text into lines and paragraphs that fit in its window. Paragraphs must be separated by <p>. Line breaks can be forced by <br>.
C:\Users\Olga\Desktop\Web\index.html
Now to see your new web page, just double-click on the Web folder and then double-click on index.html.
Now you're ready to start adding "content" to your web page. Go back to NotePad and replace the title and "(Contents go here)" with whatever you want. Any time you want to see the result, use File -> Save in NotePad and then click the Reload button on your browser.
The next sections tell how to achieve different kinds of effects.
ä a-umlaut ä Ä A-umlaut Ä á a-acute á à a-grave à ñ n-tilde ñ ß German double-s ß þ Icelandic thorn þ
(The table above is shown in the basic, default style of HTML. Of course there are many ways to customize the appearance of tables, but that's beyond the scope of this tutorial.)
Examples:
CLICK HERE for a complete list. When the page encoding is UTF-8, which is recommended, you can also enter any character at all, Roman, Cyrillic, Arabic, Hebrew, Greek. Japanese, etc, either as numeric entities or (if you have a way to type them) directly from the keyboard.
And remember: if you want to include <, &, or > literally in text to be displayed, you have to write <, &, >, respectively.
If you are a Kermit user, you can find a script to convert plain text to HTML HERE.
If the text contains lists, tables, or other structures, read on.
If you have a Microsoft Word document you want to convert to HTML, and your copy of Word does not allow the file to be "Saved As" HTML, then save it as plain text and follow the same instructions. In this case you lose the "richness" (bold, italics, font changes, etc) when you save the file, and will have to put the effects back by hand (next section).
| * | Not necessary if your text is already encoded as UTF-8. If it's not UTF-8, you can identify the encoding in the <META charset="..."> directive, but this topic is a bit advanced for this simple tutorial. |
Note: In this and the following sections, I use some "deprecated" features from earlier HTML versions because they are easier for beginners to learn (for example <big>...</big> versus <span style="font-size:120%">...</span>).
This sentence is bold. This sentence is in italics. This sentence is in bold italics. This sentence is in typewriter font. This sentence has underlined words and underlined bold words. This sentence has colored words. This sentence has big words. This one has very big words. This one has very small words.
This is a "blockquote", which is like a regular paragraph, but it has bigger margins. Begin a blockquote with <blockquote> and end it with </blockquote>. Environments such as blockquotes, lists, etc, that have a beginning and an end always use paired commands like <blah>...</blah>.
This is a blockquote inside another blockquote, which shows how HTML environments can be "nested".Here we are back in the first blockquote again.
And here we are back outside of the first blockquote.
NOTE: Many of the HTML tags used to make the special effects shown above were changed in the transition from HTML4 to HTML5 (e.g. <big>, <small>, <u>, <font>, etc) but are still recognized by HTML5 even though now they are "deprecated" and "incorrect" even though they were "correct" before.
And here is a Description List (<dl>). using Kermit commands as an example:
You can have lists within lists:
And you can have ordered lists that use letters instead of numbers:
Here is a link to the Kermit Project home page. And here is what the HTML looks like:
<a href="http://www.kermitproject.org/"> Kermit Project home page </a>
The part inside the quotes is called the URL (Uniform Resource Locator). Here is a link to Section 4 of this document, and the HTML:
The "#" indicates an internal section ID, in this case:<a href="#lists">Section 4</a>
<h3 id="lists">6. Lists</h3>
Here is a link to Section 4.0 of another document, at another website; the C-Kermit for Unix Installation Instructions. And the HTML:
<a href="http://kermitproject.org/ckuins.html#x4.0"> Section 4.0 </a>
Here is a link to a picture: CLICK HERE to see it.
If you want to link to a particular section of somebody else's Web page, visit the page, "view source", search for the text at that spot and see if there is an "id=" clause; if so, use the ID as shown just above; if not you're out of luck.
If you want to link to a particular page of a PDF document, just put "#page=123" (replace by the desired number) at the end of the URL.
Heading A Heading B Heading C Cell 1A Cell 1B Cell 1C Cell 2A Cell 2B Cell 2C Cell 3A Cell 3B Cell 3C
Same table again but with borders:
Heading A Heading B Heading C Cell 1A Cell 1B Cell 1C Cell 2A Cell 2B Cell 2C Cell 3A Cell 3B Cell 3C
The appearance with double borders is the default (and therefore easiest) table style. You can use table attributes to change the appearance.
Here's the same table again but with Column C right-adjusted:
Heading A Heading B Heading C Cell 1A Cell 1B Cell 1C Cell 2A Cell 2B Cell 2C Cell 3A Cell 3B Cell 3C
By the way, a web page can have any name at all, it doesn't have to be index.html. Index.html is a special name that is used for the "home page" of a website.
There are easier ways to do this than what I describe below, but they require add-on software. The following method should work for everybody who has Windows and an Internet connection.
If you create a public_html subdirectory of your login directory, give it "world" read and search permission, and then create an index.html file in that directory and give it world read permission, you'll have a home page. In this example "$" is the shell prompt (yours might be different), and what you type is underlined. CAUTION: the directory name is public_html but the underscore might be obscured the underline in the examples below. Whenenever typing "public_html" always include the underscore. CAUTION#2: Some Web hosting sites might use different a different name for the user's Web directory.
$ cd (Change to your login directory) $ mkdir public_html (Create public_html subdirectory) $ chmod 755 public_html (Give it world read/search permission) $ cd public_html (Enter the public_html subdirectory)
You only have to do this part once. Remember, it's public_html with an underscore, which tends not to show up when a command is underlined.
Let's assume you have created a website in the Web folder on your PC. Here's an example of how to upload your Web files to your public_html directory on Columbia University's Cunix server using FTP (File Transfer Protocol). First start the FTP program:
Start -> Run
and type "ftp" in the box. An FTP window opens and an "ftp>" prompt appears. Type the underlined commands at the "ftp>" prompt (substituting your own user ID, etc):
ftp> lcd Desktop Local directory now C:\Users\olga\Desktop. ftp> lcd Web Local directory now C:\Users\olga\Desktop\Web. ftp> open cunix Connected to cunix.cc.columbia.edu. 220 Cunix FTP server (Version 5.60) ready. User (cunix.cc.columbia.edu:(none)): olga 331 Password required for olga. Password: (type your password here) 230 User olga logged in. ftp> cd public_html ftp> binary ftp> put index.html 200 PORT command successful. 150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for index.html. 226 Transfer complete. ftp: 285 bytes sent in 0.00Seconds 285000.00Kbytes/sec. ftp> site chmod 644 index.html 200 CHMOD command successful ftp> bye
This sends the index.html file to your public_html directory on the server. You can send any other file by substituting its name for "index.html. If you want to send all the files in your Web folder, replace "put index.html with "put *" (asterisk, meaning "all files" in this directory). Always use binary mode unless you know what you're doing.
If the "site chmod" command failed (this service is not supported by some FTP servers), you have one more step. Before others can see your web files, you have to give them "world read" permission. Again, log in to the server using a terminal emulator (Telnet, SSH, Kermit, whatever), and:
$ cd ~/public_html (Enter the public_html subdirectory) $ chmod 644 * (Make all files publically readable)
Now you have a home page. If you were at Columbia and your login ID was "olga", the address (URL) of your home page would be:
http://www.columbia.edu/~olga/
If you want to add pictures to your Web page, you can upload those too (also with Kermit or FTP), and you also have to "chmod 644" all the files to make them readable by everybody. Every time you add new files to your public_html directory, you have to "chmod 644" them so they are accessible, either in the FTP session itself (as shown previously), or by logging in to the host and:
$ cd ~/public_html ("public_html")
$ chmod 644 *
Pictures should be in JPG or GIF format. To include a picture ("image") in your page, include a sequence like this at the desired spot:
<img src="filename" alt="brief description">
Replace filename by the name of the file (e.g. skyline.jpg). Almost every HTML tag can be customized by "attributes" in the begin tag. For example if you want the image to scale itself to the viewer's window (on a computer, cell phone, or other device), and furthermore you want the text of the page to flow around it, you can do:
<img alt="brief description" style="width:50%; max-width:140px; float:left; margin:10px;" src="filename">You can look up the attributes in Google, just search for html width, html float, etc.
Now you have your own home page on the Web, and your own URL (Uniform Resource Locator, or Web address). In this example, the URL is:
http://www.columbia.edu/~olga/
Of course, if you prefer, you can also do all the Web-page editing directly on the server, using an a server-based text editor like EMACS, Pico, or Vi while logged in to the Unix shell. In that case you don't need to upload anything (except maybe photos), but then you also need to be more familiar with the server's Unix environment and commands and utilities.
Anyway, if you have mastered the simple techniques shown in this page, you know the basics. Which is more than can be said of many "web designers" who only know how to use prepackaged software to create web pages by picking things from menus and moving things around with a mouse. To go further, you can almost always find out how to do what you want by searching Google ("html how do I ...?"), or looking at the HTML code of different websites (browser "view source" command) but, again, only for pages that look like this one.
Of course HTML is a standard, and here are the official references:
You can find lots more Web pages in the same simple style as this one at the Kermit Project website and the New York City New Deal website.
(End)
| Frank da Cruz | Page created: 1992 | Last update: 13 March 2021 |