The 30-Minute Web? Part III of IV: The Devil is in the Details by Nicki Salcedo and Leonard Johnson You’ve put your big toe in the water and the water feels fine. Now is the time for you to jump in to the Web wonderland by making a choice. One, you can hire someone or some company to build your site. Two, you can purchase a Web design tool. Or three, you can do the whole thing by yourself. There is a signpost up ahead. You have just entered the Twilight Zone… Hire a Web Designer: Let there be light…and there was lightTake out your Gold Card and pay the nice Web designer, or bribe your niece (she is after all a Computer Science major at Cal Tech). It isn’t nearly as fun as having a pool boy, but having someone else design your Web site has its advantages. You provide the content, they do the work. You must ask lots of questions since it is your money being spent and your reputation on the line. Read the contract or agreement carefully. Then ask more questions. Who owns your domain? (You should)Will they pay for hosting renewals? How often will they update your site? What is their fee structure? Do you have administrative rights and passwords to update your site? How much input do you have on design and layout? How do you terminate contract if you want to switch to another designer? Do they provide Web analytics? How can you access this information? Once you’ve come to an understanding you feel comfortable with, enjoy having a Web site and still having time to write your next book. It will be a best-seller, won’t it? I hope so.Web-building Tools: Do You Know What That’s Worth? Heave is a Place on Earth. There are several tools available that can help create web pages for your site. Host providers, the companies that provide the disk space and internet access for your website, may supply pre-installed Web-building tools that allow you to create pages, add pictures, and even create basic menus to provide site navigation. Two popular tools are Microsoft Expression Web (the replacement for FrontPage which has been discontinued) and Adobe Dreamweaver. With these products, you can:
You may want to consider adding more than just text files to your site. There are also image, audio, and video files. For image files, you want to make sure that they load quickly and are appropriately sized for the average browser. If the image takes too long to appear or takes up too much of the page, consider re-sizing with an image editing tool. With audio and video
files, even in a broadband world, these files can take awhile to load
before they begin play. If they must be
included, add volume/mute controls.
Visitors (and their neighbors next door) will thank you. You can try evaluation copies of these tools. You will be asked to register before you can commence downloading the applications. They will operate up to 60 days from the date of installation. To download Expression Web: http://www.microsoft.com/expression/products/retail.aspx?key=web To download Dreamweaver: https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/tdrc/index.cfm?product=dreamweaver Learning HTML: The Devil Went Down to Georgia If you are going to build your Web site completely from scratch you will need a few things: basic knowledge of HTML, a text editing program, and an FTP client program. Each tag is completed with a similar tag. For example, <b> begins bold text and </b> ends bold text. Basic HTML Tags and their description: <html> Begins HTML document <title> Defines name that will appear in title bar <body> Defines the document body <meta name> Keywords that describe your Web site <p> Defines a paragraph <br> Inserts a single line break <a href=> How to insert an active Web link <b> Makes text Bold font A text editor is the simplest form of a word processing program. It allows you to input your HTML and save the file in .html, .asp, .php or other Web file formats. Traditional word processing programs like Microsoft Word or WordPerfect try to interpret the text, but text editors don’t. See below for a sample HTML page in a text editing program Do you remember what FTP is from Part I? (FTP is the File Transfer Protocol to transfer data from one computer to another over the Internet, or through a network. Once you create web pages this is how you transferred files from your design program to the server.) If you use a PC with Microsoft a built in FTP Client Program may be available on your computer. Here is a screen shot of where you would find it in “My Network Places” You will need to know your FTP address, username, and password to link to your server or web host. Then you copy the HTML files from your computer to FTP site.That wasn’t so bad was it? Creating a Web site isn’t like living in an alternate reality; it is merely a way to showcase you and your writing reality. Coming next month the final installment of The 30-Minute Web? Part IV of IV: Meta Tags, Search Engines, and Analytics. You built your Web site, and now I want you to reel them in and then watch them play Leonard Johnson is the Web Administrator for Georgia Romance Writers. He is ashamed to admit that he has no Web site, because he has been so busy building and maintaining Web sites for other people. He has RWA PRO status and writes paranormal and fantasy. Len’s current writing projects are Blood Dark and Magic Unintentional. |
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