Chapter 1

Web Publishing Basics

AL
In This Chapter

Getting started with Web publishing

RI

Putting together a Web page the easy way — and the easier way

Examining types of Web sites

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Reviewing Web page guidelines

MA
T he Web is an incredibly easy way to get your message — any message —
out to anyone in the world who’s interested in it. By putting up a Web
D
page, you can stay in touch with friends and family, entertain people, help
yourself get a job, or help yourself do your job. You can start a business,
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grow a business, or just have fun expressing yourself.

GH

Nearly a million people have purchased this book since its first edition more
than ten years ago, and our readers have used every technique we describe
in this book, and more, to get their first Web pages up and running. By read-
ing this book, you’re starting on a path that many, many people before you
RI

have followed to Web page success.

PY

Web Basics 101

CO

You may have begun using the Internet and Web without really getting a
chance to learn how they work. Knowing how they work can help you
become a better Web publisher. Here’s a brief, to-the-point description.
For more information, you can search the Web; the World Wide Web
consortium site at www.w3.org is a good place to start.
10 Part I: Create a Web Page Today

Understanding how the Web works

The Web, formally called the World Wide Web, is a collection of a bunch of
text and graphics files (plus some other stuff) that make up Web pages. Web
pages are combined into linked sets of pages called Web sites. People often
use the term interchangeably, but technically, a Web page is a single page; a
Web site is one or more Web pages linked together.

The base of the Web is the Internet. The Web depends on the Internet to con-
nect its many files together and to allow people to get to the Web. E-mail is a
separate function that also depends on the Internet. And FTP (file transfer
protocol) is another Internet service, used to move files from one computer
to another.

The Web is defined by two specifications: HyperText Transfer Protocol

(HTTP) and HyperText Markup Language (HTML). The underlying idea
behind the Web is hypertext — text that can contain links to other pieces of
text stored anywhere on the Internet. The Web got its name from the way all
the links connect the pieces of text together like a huge spider’s web.

You look at Web pages by using a program called a Web browser. A Web
browser uses HTTP to request a Web page from a Web server. The Web page,
in turn, uses HTTP to request any other files, such as graphics images or ads,
that are part of the Web page. After you request a Web page, your Web browser
pulls the files that make up the Web page from one or more Web servers and
assembles those files into one page on your machine.

Getting webbed
This book talks a lot about the Web, but doesn’t MSN (Internet access from Microsoft) is also
discuss how to get on the Web as a user. Even popular, and there are a host of other providers
if you’re on the Web already, perhaps through a who can give you a good deal — in many
connection at work, you may also want to get cases, cheaper than AOL. What most of these
on the Web from home. How do you do that? other providers lack is the ability to get online
from nearly anywhere in the world by using a
The most popular online service is still America
dialup number and the wide range of services
Online (AOL). AOL has robust Web publishing
AOL offers.
features, coverage around most of the world,
good spam blocking, kid-safe controls, and It’s quite likely that your Internet Service Provider,
many other good features. You can use AOL’s whether it’s a big name like AOL and MSN or a
Web publishing features (see Chapter 4) little guy, offers you space for your Web site —
whether you’re an AOL user or not. and perhaps helpful support services as well.
Check your ISP’s offerings as you decide how to
get your first pages up on the Web.
 Chapter 1: Web Publishing Basics 11
The most popular Web browsers are Microsoft Internet Explorer, which you
can use separately or as a built-in part of America Online software; Firefox,
the successor to the once-popular Netscape Navigator; Opera, a standards-
compliant Web browser from a small company; and Safari, a browser for
Macintosh computers.

After a Web browser requests a Web page using HTTP, HTML steps in. Each
Web page includes a text file written in a format called HTML (for HyperText
Markup Language) and usually one or more graphics files. HTML defines a
Web page’s appearance and functionality. Actually, HTML doesn’t precisely
specify the Web page’s appearance: Different Web browsers display various
HTML commands differently. Also, users can specify how they want things to
look. So what one user sees when she looks at a Web page may be different
from what another user sees. (Chapter 8 goes into detail about HTML.)

Getting a Web page up on the Internet is surprisingly easy. In fact, if you’re in

a hurry, you may want to go straight to Chapter 2 (for GeoCities, a Web-based
service), Chapter 3 (for Google Page Creator), or Chapter 4 (for the fine page
creation service on AOL and AOL.com). Follow the instructions there to get
your first Web page up in a few hours.

Getting up URL-y
The Internet is the giant computer network that connects other computer net-
works around the world. At its base, the Internet is just a giant mechanism
for moving files from one computer to another. It finds files by using a kind of
address called a URL (Uniform Resource Locator — which sounds like some-
thing the Army invented to track down clothes!). The acronym URL is usually
pronounced “you are ell,” although some pronounce it “earl.” Most people
today use the term “Web address” or “Internet address” instead of “URL,”
but as a Web publisher you should know both terms.

The address that you type to get to a Web page is a URL. For example, www.
netsurf.com is the URL for Arthur’s Netsurfer Communications Web site. A
URL consists of three parts (see Figure 1-1):

 Protocol: The name of the communications language that the URL uses:
HTTP (used on the Web), HTTPS (for secure Web pages), FTP, and so on.
 Domain name: The name of the server the file is on.
 Pathname: The location of the desired file on the server.
12 Part I: Create a Web Page Today

Figure 1-1:
URLy to Protocol Domain name Pathname
Web, URLy http:// www.server.com/ folder/filename.ext
to rise.

The “For Dummies” Way

to Web Publishing
Reading this book is going to make you a Web publisher — because anyone
who puts up even a single, simple home page is a publisher on the World
Wide Web. Congratulations in advance!

Putting up a Web page involves a few steps that are the same no matter
which tools or techniques you use. The steps may have different names, or
be intermingled with each other, but they’re still basically the same. Here
they are:

1. Create the HTML text file that’s the basis for your Web page (see
Chapter 10).
2. Create or obtain the graphic images you’ll use to spice up the appear-
ance of your page (see Chapter 12).
3. Create a link to the graphics in your HTML text file so they appear
where you want them to (covered in Chapter 13).
4. Preview your Web page on your own machine (see Chapter 10).
5. Find Web server space (see Chapter 16).
6. Transfer the HTML text file and the graphics files to the Web server
(also in Chapter 16).
7. Check that your new Web page works correctly now that it’s online
(again, see Chapter 16).

If you use an easy-to-use tool such as GeoCities (see Chapter 2), the above
steps are combined and most of the details are handled for you. However, it’s
good to know what’s happening “behind the scenes,” to help avoid problems
or to help you tackle a more complicated site later.
 Chapter 1: Web Publishing Basics 13

Web terms to know

We want to clear up how we define and use  Home page: The Web page that people gen-
some Web terms: erally access first within a Web site. You let
people know the URL (address) of your
 Web page: A text document that is pub-
home page and try to get other Web page
lished on a Web server, has HTML tags in it,
creators to provide links to it.
almost always includes hypertext links, and
usually includes graphics. When you click  HTML tags: Brief formatting or linking com-
the Back button in your Web browser, you mands placed within brackets in the text of
move to the previous Web page that you an HTML file. For instance, the <b> tag tells
visited. the Web browser to display text after the
command in bold type; the </b> tag turns
 Web site: A collection of Web pages that
the bold off. See Chapter 8 for more on
share a common theme and purpose and
HTML.
that users generally access through the
site’s home page.

These steps are usually simple if you’re creating a basic Web page. However,
they do get more complicated sometimes, especially if you’re trying to create
a multipage Web site. This book tells you several different, easy ways to
create a Web page, and gets you started on expanding your Web page into
a multipage Web site.

When you create a Web page that has complex formatting, or that mixes text
and graphics, you’ll want to test it in the most popular Web browsers. See
Chapter 16 for the Web addresses from which you can download Microsoft
Internet Explorer, the America Online client, the Firefox browser, the Opera
browser, the Safari browser, or other tools.

For an example of a good-looking Web page, check out the For Dummies Web
page, shown in Figure 1-2. It has an attractive layout, interesting information,
and links to a great deal more information on the For Dummies site and other
sites. The For Dummies Web site is very well done, but you, too, can achieve
similar results with a reasonable amount of planning and hard work. In this
book, we concentrate on helping you create a simple, individual Web page
and combining several Web pages into a closely linked group of pages called
a Web site.
14 Part I: Create a Web Page Today

Figure 1-2:
The For
Dummies
home page
shows Web
publishing
skill.

Note: The For Dummies home page is shown in Microsoft Internet Explorer,
the most popular Web browser. For consistency, we use Internet Explorer for
most of the Web page images in this book.

Making simple things simple

If all you want to do is create a simple “I exist” Web page, either for yourself
or for your business, you don’t have to go through the rigmarole of figuring
out HTML or learning a tool, finding server space, and so on. Chapters 2, 3,
and 4 show you several ways to get your first Web page up quickly and easily,
using existing templates or simple HTML. Chapter 2 is for those who want to
use GeoCities, a Web-based service; Chapter 3 is for those who want to try
Google Page Creator, an emerging tool from the leaders in Web search, Google.
Chapter 4 covers the popular Web page creation tools found in the AOL
online service and at AOL.com.

To see how easy publishing on the Web is, just turn to Chapter 2, 3, or 4 and
get started. You’ll be a Web publisher with just a couple of hours of effort.
 Chapter 1: Web Publishing Basics 15

Seeing HTML
When Tim Berners-Lee invented HTML at CERN see all the HTML tags that make the Web page
(the European particle physics research facil- look and act the way it does.
ity) in the late 1980’s, he probably never imag-
After you open the HTML file, you can edit the
ined that so many people would be interested
text and the HTML tags, save the file, and then
in seeing it. Today, most browsers include a
open the file again in your browser to see how
command that enables you to see the actual
it looks with the HTML changes. Don’t publish
HTML source that makes the page look and
someone else’s page, of course — but other
work the way it does.
than that, experimenting in this way is a good
For example, in Internet Explorer, choose View➪ way to learn.
Source to view the underlying HTML file. You

Making difficult things possible

The free services we describe in this book differ in how far they allow you to
go without outgrowing what you can get for free. If your site gets too large or
gets too much traffic, or if you want to use your site for business, at some
point these services ask you to start paying for the site.

The rest of Part I describes what you need to know to get an initial, simple
Web page up on the Web. Part II describes specialized sites — Flickr for
photos (Chapter 5), Blogger for a Web log (also known as a blog — Chapter
6), or eBay to sell a product (Chapter 7). Parts III and IV tell you how to
improve your Web page, by placing graphics, adding links, and making your
layout look attractive. Part V tells you how to add animation and interactiv-
ity, plus expand your Web page into a Web site.

Types of Web Sites

The Web offers examples of nearly every communications strategy known to
humanity, successful or not. But not every example of a Web page that you
find online applies to your situation. For one thing, the resources of different
Web publishers vary tremendously, from an individual putting up family photos
to a large corporation creating an online commerce site. For another, several
different types of Web sites exist, and not every lesson learned in creating
one type of Web site applies to the others.
16 Part I: Create a Web Page Today

The major types of Web pages are personal, picture, topical, commercial, and
entertainment sites. Increasingly, you can combine different kinds of sites in
mashups — sites that combine different kinds of technologies. (The Web itself
already does that, but a mashup takes combining technologies to the next
level.) In the next sections, we describe some of the specific considerations
that apply to each type of Web page and not to the others. Decide in advance
what type of Web page you want to create, and look for other pages like it
online.

Personal sites
Personal Web sites can have many goals. Often, your goal is simply to share
something about yourself with coworkers, friends, family, and others. Personal
Web pages are a great way for people to find out about others with similar
interests and for people in one culture to find out about other cultures. You
can also use a personal Web site to share family photos and events — kind of
like a holiday letter that’s always up to date. Figure 1-3 shows part of the per-
sonal site of Jeff Lowe, who’s piloting a remote-controlled blimp in the pictures.
You can find the site at www.jefflowe.com.

Figure 1-3:
Jeff Lowe
pilots the
blimp (and
posts his
résumé too).
 Chapter 1: Web Publishing Basics 17
Creating a personal Web site is a great deal of fun and great practice for other
work. But personal Web sites are often left unchanged after the initial thrill of
creating and publishing them fades. Be different — keep your Web site updated!

As personal Web sites evolve, their creators tend to add more information
about a single key interest, in which case the pages may become topical Web
sites (described later). In other cases, the Web site creator adds more infor-
mation about professional goals and accomplishments, in which case the
Web page becomes more like a business Web site.

Following a few simple rules helps make your personal Web site more fun and
less work:

 What’s on first? No, no. What’s on second . . . The upper part of your
Web page — the part that appears first when you bring the page up
onscreen — needs to make the main point of the site clear. If the main
point is “you,” the first thing people see should be your name, your
photo, and links to some of the things about “you” that are in your site.
If the point of your site is a topical interest, business interest, or profes-
sional self-promotion, the first area of the home page should make that
clear, too.
 Keep it simple. Start with modest goals and get something up on the
Web; then create a “To Do” list of ways in which to extend your site.
Consider spinning off commercial and topical pages that reflect your
desires and interests — each page with its own Web address — rather
than creating a sprawling personal Web site.

Are personal Web sites still relevant?

Most of the activity you hear about on the Web people all over the world have access to the
these days relates to large, commercial sites, Web. (The Web recently passed 1 billion users,
political sites, and so on. Personal Web sites an important milestone.) The chances are
have gotten somewhat lost in the shuffle as better than ever that a high percentage of your
better-funded sites belonging to companies and friends, family, and colleagues can visit and
organizations get all the attention. Never fear; appreciate your site. So don’t be put off by the
personal Web sites are still fun and easy to tremendous growth of business and large orga-
create. And did we mention that they’re fun? nizational sites on the Web. The personal and
fun side is growing, too; it’s just getting less
Part of what’s driving the continuing interest in
media attention than the commercial side.
personal Web pages is that more and more
18 Part I: Create a Web Page Today

 Provide lots of links. One of the best ways to share your interests is to
share information about Web sites that you like, as well as books and
other resources. You can put this list on your one and only Web page or
make it a separate page that’s part of a personal Web site. If you develop
a thorough, carefully updated list of links for a specific interest area, you
create a very valuable resource for others.
 Consider your privacy. A Web page is just like a billboard — except that
100 million or more people can see it, not just a few thousand. Don’t put
anything up on your Web page that you wouldn’t want on a billboard.
And think twice before putting up information about your kids and other
family members: You may well be willing to compromise your own pri-
vacy, but you shouldn’t make that decision for other people.

Picture sites
Lots of people just want to share pictures online; it’s a lot easier to share pic-
tures on the Web than to mail them around, or wait until you get together
with people.

You can use any of the Web page creation tools described in this book to
create a photos-mostly Web site, although Flickr (see Chapter 5) is suited to
this purpose alone.

Sharing pictures is often a great joy, but also often quite boring for other
people. Here are some tips to help keep your site interesting:

 Get organized. Think about how photos are going to be organized.

Basically, your site should be like a magic photo album — with new con-
tent at the front, and as many older photos as you want at the back. So
use the home page to highlight the new stuff, and keep the older stuff
moving back into archived folders.
 Be a photo editor. “Less is more,” up to a point, even on sites designed
to show the grandkids’ latest photos off to proud grandparents. Usually,
one or two photos of a given spot or event, whether it’s a birthday party,
a visit to an historic site, or something similar, are enough to give a flavor
of it.
 Watch the megabytes. Use a photo editing program to save your files as
JPEG images with the appropriate degree of compression (see Chapter
12 for details). Even though many Web users today have broadband
access, you don’t want to freeze out the people who don’t.
 Protect your identity. Make sure not to provide identifying information
such as anyone’s full name, address, or phone number. This helps pre-
vent identity theft.
 Chapter 1: Web Publishing Basics 19

Getting personal with blogs

A Web log, or blog for short, is a sort of online logs cross the boundaries between personal,
diary that usually includes links to Web sites topical, and business categories — and some of
that the user has recently found interesting — them are pretty entertaining as well!
thus the term Web log. Blogging, or maintain-
We have the somewhat old-fashioned view that
ing a Web log, is a whole new form of Web
you probably would benefit from knowing about
publishing.
Web page creation in general, not just blogging,
You can create a Web page or Web site that’s so we defer a detailed discussion of it to Chapter
nothing but a blog, or combine blog content with 6. But if your whole reason for wanting to create
traditional content. Some blogs are extremely Web pages is to create a blog to call your very
personal — sometimes uncomfortably so. Web own, please skip ahead and read Chapter 6 now,
logs are also used in big Web sites, such as and then come back here when you want to find
major newspaper sites. In other words, Web more about Web pages in general.

Topical sites
That’s “topical,” not “tropical.” (See the Kaua’i Exotix home page later in this
chapter for an example of the latter.) A topical home page is a resource on a
specific topic. A topic can be an interest or volunteer group to which the
author belongs, in which case the page may grow over time into something
much like a business Web site. (Creating a Web site for a group is a tremen-
dous contribution that you can make, but it can be a lot of work; watch what
you may be getting yourself into!) Or your topical Web page can be about any
interest, cause, concern, obsession, or flight of fancy that you have. In this
sense, the Web is like an out-of-control vanity press, allowing anyone to go on
and on about anything — sometimes offering something of great value, often-
times not.

Making a second career out of maintaining and extending a topical Web site is
easy, but the pay is usually nil. Here are some things to consider when you
create a topical Web site:

 What’s on first? As with a personal Web page, the title of a topical Web
page and the first screen that users see need to make unmistakably clear
the topic that the page covers. And, to the extent possible, they must
describe what resources the Web site offers about the topic.
 Keep focused. A topical Web site loses some of its value if it goes beyond
a single topic. How many of the people who share your love for Thai
cooking also share your abiding interest in rotifers? (Microscopic crea-
tures which are too small to use in most recipes, Thai or not.) If you
20 Part I: Create a Web Page Today

have two different interests that you want to share on the Web, consider
creating separate Web sites.
 Create a succession plan. If your Web site grows beyond your capacity
to maintain and extend it properly, find someone to help out or to take it
over. The first person you should ask about taking over is anyone who’s
complaining that you’re not extending the site fast enough! Decide what
role you can handle and then ask for help in doing the rest.

Business sites
Business Web sites, also known as commercial sites, constitute the 50,000-
pound gorilla of the Web, with a tremendous amount of time, energy, and
money devoted to them. Business Web sites cover a wide range of styles
because their goals and the expertise and resources behind them vary so
much. This book provides enough information for you to create a competent
“Web presence” site with several pages of contact and company information.
But even these kinds of sites vary quite a bit, and you need to be sure that
your company’s page is well implemented.

Figure 1-4 shows the Netsurfer home page created by Arthur Bebak, one of
the authors. (So now you can call him “Author” Bebak!) Go surf around the
Netsurfer site to see what a site designed and implemented by one of us
looks like: www.netsurf.com/nsd.

The first question to ask about a business Web site is “Who can access it?”
Some sites are intended for the World Wide Web and everyone on it; others
are on the World Wide Web but are password-protected or otherwise restricted
in access; still others are on private networks and inaccessible to outsiders.
These inaccessible networks are described as being “behind the firewall.”
Any Web page that isn’t accessible to everyone is considered to be on an
intranet, if access is limited to one company, or an extranet, if access is lim-
ited to a group of companies that are business partners.

Despite the wide variety of business Web sites, following just a few rules can
help you create a page that meets your goals:

 What’s on first? A business Web page should make the name and pur-
pose(s) of your business immediately clear. Also, the site should provide
easy-to-find information on how to contact your business and what
products and services the business offers.
 Get the right look. Telling someone you don’t like their Web site is like
telling them you don’t like their haircut — they’re likely to take it person-
ally. But an ugly Web site, like an ugly haircut, can make a permanently
 Chapter 1: Web Publishing Basics 21

Figure 1-4:
The
Netsurfer
Communi-
cations
motto: More
signal, less
noise.

bad impression. Make sure that the look of your Web site is up to the pro-
fessional standards set by other aspects of your business.
 Get permission. Unless you own the business, you should ask for per-
mission before putting a company page on the open Web. You also need
to make absolutely sure you have the permissions you need for any
images or documents that you use before you publish your Web page.
 Inside or outside the firewall? Deciding who gets access is tricky. For
example, a small amount of otherwise confidential information can make
a site more valuable, but the presence of confidential information also
prevents you from opening up the entire site to the broader public.
Implementing access controls can also be difficult. Investigate how to
password-protect a site, or ask a network administrator at your com-
pany whether you can physically control access. For instance, you may
be able to selectively allow access based on what network the user con-
nects from.
 Find experts. Businesses similar to yours — or even colleagues, if you’re
in a large company — likely have Web sites that have a purpose similar
to yours. Look to similar sites for guidance and inspiration.
22 Part I: Create a Web Page Today

 Monitor usage. Investing time, energy, and money in a business Web

site requires a trade-off among the Web site and other things that those
resources could go to. One of the crucial questions you may need to
answer in order to justify Web site maintenance or expansion is how
much use the site gets. Investigate ways to measure the use of your site.
A good way to start is a basic hit counter, such as the free one you can
find at the following URL: www.statcounter.com.
 Seek out additional resources. This book focuses on hands-on creation
of single Web pages and simple Web sites. For a larger business site, you
need access to additional information to help you with the planning,
hosting, and maintenance of the site. Consider purchasing HTML 4 For
Dummies, 5th Edition, by Ed Tittel and Mary Burmeister, for more infor-
mation on the HTML specification, and Internet Marketing For Dummies,
by Frank Catalano and Bud Smith (both books from Wiley), for more
information on planning and creating a business Web site with a
marketing bent.

Having a Web site that’s too obviously “handmade,” rather than profession-
ally created, can be embarrassing for a business. However, many sites are
going “back to the future” with a simple, clean look that’s light on graphics.
So how do you decide whether to make your look fancy or simple? The best
way to get a quick reality check is to look at some competitors’ Web sites and
make sure that your initial site looks roughly as good as theirs. And remem-
ber that oftentimes the most embarrassing thing is having no site at all.

Entertainment sites
Entertainment is one of the top few reasons why people use the Web, and
the number of entertainment sites continues to grow. Humorous pages and
shared games on online services are now a major presence on the Web.

The high expectations that people have of entertainment sites can make
these sites some of the most demanding to create. Here are a few suggestions
for creating entertainment sites:

 Don’t start here. Don’t try to figure out Web publishing by creating an
entertainment site. It’s a very demanding task. Try another type first and
edge your way into entertainment.
 Keep it fresh. How funny is a joke the second time you hear it? You have
to either frequently update the content on your entertainment site, or
allow participants to provide new content through their interaction with
one another — neither option is easy.
 Push the technology. Interactivity is also key to entertainment, which
means going beyond HTML and static graphics. You probably need to
 Chapter 1: Web Publishing Basics 23

Is your page cybersmut?

For most Web page publishers, the best policy they may find your content offensive. That lets
with respect to putting anything potentially them gracefully opt out before they view what-
offensive in your Web pages is to keep your site ever you show.
clean. The use of gratuitous sex and violence in
Even that enlightened approach may not be
your Web pages will simply put off many people
enough, however. Some Web server owners
and put you and your Web site in a bad light.
will drop your page if it violates their rules, and
But what if the sex or violence is not gratuitous several countries have laws that specify what
and is actually central to your point? Then send can and can’t be on a Web page. Be sure to find
the authors your URL so that we can see it for out about the rules and laws that apply to you
ourselves. No, seriously: Be sure to make the before you put anything questionable on your
first page a home page that warns readers that Web page.

figure out and use at least one advanced Web technology, such as Flash,
to make a fresh and interesting entertainment Web site.
 Let the technology push you. The technology can give you ideas that
are in themselves pretty funny. Try using Java to create a Three Stooges-
type animated routine, or use ActiveX to create a virtual reality environ-
ment that includes fun-house mirrors. (We describe both Java and
ActiveX in Chapter 18.)

Thinking Your Web Page Through

A Web page or Web site is basically a publication, though an interactive one.
Thinking about a few simple principles now, before you start, can help make
your Web page much more interesting and useful to the people who see it.
You can also revisit this section after you put up your initial Web home page;
use these guidelines to revise your page and make it even more interesting
and useful!

Ask “Why am I doing this?”

Ask yourself, as you’re starting, “Why am I doing this?” (As you do more and
more work on your page, your answer to this question may come to have
24 Part I: Create a Web Page Today

some degree of profanity in it!) That is, why are you creating the page, and
not having someone else create it for you? The answer helps you determine
some important things about the page. The following list details the most
common reasons for people to get involved in creating a Web page:

 For work: More and more people are being asked to create Web pages
and Web sites as part of their jobs; for example, they use the Web to
communicate with people inside or outside their companies. But unless
you plan to be a full-time Webmaster, you need to balance the time you
spend developing your pages with the time you spend on the other
demands of your job. Be modest in your initial goals, and keep track of
each step in creating and modifying your Web pages so that you — or
the person who takes over for you — can refer to the records later.
 For fun: Fun sites are a good thing, and they are a lot of what makes
the Web worthwhile. But if you create your site for fun, you may find
time to work on it only after you spend time on other things, such as
work, school, or time with friends and family. So don’t be too ambitious
in your initial plans, or you may take quite a while to finish and publish
your page.
 As a career move: So you want to be a full-time, or nearly full-time,
Webmaster; or you want, in some other way, to make the Internet or Web
part of your career? In this kind of situation, you can afford to plan an
ambitious Web site that uses advanced tools, tracks usage, and other-
wise gets closer to the cutting edge of the Web. To gain experience,
create your initial Web page by using the accessible and broad-based
tools and approaches we describe in this book. Then take your page
closer to the cutting edge by using the more advanced techniques
described and taught elsewhere, such as JavaScript programming as
described in JavaScript For Dummies, 3rd Edition, by Emily A. Vander
Veer (Wiley).
 Who knows? As famous baseball manager Yogi Berra once said, “When
you come to a fork in the road, take it.” You may not have a specific
reason for publishing on the Web, but that shouldn’t stop you. You may
figure out a good reason after you have a little Web experience under
your belt. Start simple, so you can score an early success in getting a
basic Web page up, and then go from there.

Don’t spend too much time on design

Designing a Web page is unlike designing any other kind of publication
because you don’t have as much control over the precise appearance of a
Web page as you do with other types of publications. Different modem and
network connection speeds, browsers, screen sizes, and font and other settings
 Chapter 1: Web Publishing Basics 25
within a browser vary so much that users can have very different experi-
ences with your Web page.

With the latest versions of HTML, controlling more aspects of your Web
page’s appearance is possible. Advanced sites, such as amazon.com, use
many different aspects of HTML, as well as programming languages such as
JavaScript, to create dense, rich layouts more like a magazine than a typical
Web page. However, some aspects of the newest versions of HTML are not yet
standard across different Web browsers. In this book, we stick with HTML 4.0,
which works the same way for nearly all Web users.

Keep your design simple and don’t spend too much time on it initially. A sim-
pler design is more likely to work for everyone — and be easier to create and
update, as well. Then improve the design as you find out more about Web
publishing and more about how people use your page.

Big issues for big sites

This book focuses on the needs of people who include massive early investment to create a
create a single Web page or a small Web site, beautiful site, months of failure to update or
and who do so on their own. Larger sites, or maintain the site, followed by finger-pointing
sites that need to be put up quickly or changed about who wasted all that money. Usually the
rapidly, need to have additional people working problem is that no one set goals for the site, so
on them. no one managed the site’s design and con-
struction with those specific goals in mind.
If you want to create a larger site down the
Companies often designate too few financial
road, start thinking now about what resources
and human resources for maintenance and
may be available to put into it. How many
improvement of the site. If this scenario has
people in your company or other organization
happened in your company, you know the prob-
work on advertising, public relations, and mar-
lems that result, so be sure to establish clear
keting? How many people question whether
goals for your own Web efforts.
those jobs are real work? (Just kidding — the
lead author, who’s a marketer, wrote that!) The most important element in adopting any
new technology for business is a successful
You may reasonably expect your company to
pilot project. As someone creating a smallish
re-target some fraction of its advertising, mar-
Web site, you’re developing important skills and
keting, and PR resources to support a presence
knowledge about the all-important conver-
on the Web. And what about sales? As Web-
gence of your business’s needs with the Web’s
based business transactions take off, some
opportunities. Set specific goals, strive to meet
portion of a company’s sales effort becomes
them, and record both your problems and your
Web-based, necessitating a suitable up-front
successes. By doing so, you position yourself
commitment to bring returns down the road.
to justify further investment of resources as the
Or your company may already suffer from Web Web grows in importance for your company.
burnout. Classic symptoms of Web burnout
26 Part I: Create a Web Page Today

Put the good stuff first

Imagine the Web as a giant magazine rack and the person surfing the Web as
someone scanning the front covers of all those magazines. People who see
your Web page decide whether to stay at your site — or go elsewhere —
based largely on what they see when your page first comes up.

If your purpose is to provide information or links, put that information first

or, at most, one click away. For example, to create a site that provides infor-
mation about a company, make getting contact information — your company
name, address, phone number, and fax number — very easy. To create a per-
sonal site that is attractive to potential employers, make clear what employ-
ment field you’re in right at the top of your Web page and make your résumé
easy to access.

If your purpose is to draw people into your site to entertain them, educate
them, or expose them to messages from advertisers — or to do all of these
things at once — then the first part of the page should make a strong impres-
sion and invite the user to go further into your site. Figure 1-5 shows the
Kaua’i Exotix Web page, certainly one that catches your attention, located at
the following URL: www.kexotix.com.

Figure 1-5:
Buds for
your buds.
 Chapter 1: Web Publishing Basics 27
But, like the Kaua’i Exotix Web page, your home page also should help people
who seek a quick “hit” of information; they’re more likely to come back later
if you don’t waste their time during their first quick visit.

Think twice about download times

Putting lots of graphics in your pages is time-intensive for you because creat-
ing or finding good graphics and placing them appropriately in your Web
page can take a great deal of time and effort. Graphics are also time-intensive
for those who surf your site because they can take a long time to download.
So plan to use spot graphics (small images that download quickly) at first.
Think twice before creating large clickable image maps or attractive opening
graphics like those you find on the sites of large companies, such as General
Motors or Apple. If you do use an opening graphic, keep the file size under
20K or so. (See Chapter 14 for details.)

You may find a good deal of coverage in the computer press, and even in
mainstream newspapers and newsmagazines, about ongoing efforts to make
faster access available to ordinary users. But for all the talk about cable
modems, Digital Subscriber Line (DSL), and other advanced techniques,
nearly half of home users in the United States are still on 56 Kbps or slower
modems — more in most other countries. (Business users are typically on
faster connections.) So ignore the hype — the speed at which the average
person accesses the Web is still moving upward gradually, not leaping ahead.
For now, be conservative in how much data you put in each page, and test
the download times of your pages over a modem-based connection before
you publish them.

Know your audience

According to Web researchers, Web users overwhelmingly speak English as
either a first or second language. Consequently, the great majority of Web con-
tent, Web creation tools, and Web browsers use the English language. More
than ten years after the birth of the Web — which happened in Switzerland —
North America is still the “center of gravity” for Web access. This situation will
gradually change as other countries catch up to Web penetration in the United
States.

Why are people online? Surveys indicate that the top reasons people use the
Web are for information-gathering, entertainment, education, work, “time-
wasting,” and shopping. Which of these purposes do you intend for your site
to serve? How do you appeal to people who are online? How do you help
28 Part I: Create a Web Page Today

them find you? The answers to these questions can help you enhance the
appeal and usefulness of your site.

Finally, what kind of browsers are your users running? Surveys indicate that
over 90 percent of Web users run Microsoft Internet Explorer; most of the rest
use Firefox, which is based on Netscape Navigator. Both of these browsers,
and most others that make up the remaining user base, support graphics and
tables, and nearly all users run their browsers with graphics turned on (which
doesn’t mean that they appreciate waiting for complex images to load —
unless those images are pretty cool!).

For more details about who’s online, what they do there, and what it means
to you if you’re creating a business Web site, see Internet Marketing For
Dummies, by Frank Catalano and Bud Smith (Wiley).

Use “text bites”

As we mention earlier in this chapter, when preparing a Web site, less is
more. Saying something with less text makes users more likely to read and
remember it. A text bite is like a sound bite — it’s a short, clearly written
piece of text that makes a single point.

Although you can overuse text bites, they’re very important in Web page
design. Text bites help you convey as much information as possible in the
limited amount of time users spend looking at each Web page. And they help
you balance the basic elements of Web page design: text, links, and graphics.

If you want to put long documents on the Web, consider rewriting them as a
series of text bites. If rewriting them is too much work to be practical, at least
create short, punchy text for navigation and for introductory paragraphs to
the long documents. Within a long document, add headers to break up the
flow of text and provide pointers on your Web site to key areas within the
document. Without such guidance, users may well give up in frustration
without reaching the information they’re looking for.

Look at sites you like

Look at sites you like and at sites whose purposes are similar to your own.
What’s good about them? What’s not? Imitate successful elements — without
copying, which would be a violation of ethics as well as copyright laws — and
avoid unsuccessful ones. As the development of your site progresses, keep
 Chapter 1: Web Publishing Basics 29
checking it against the sites you previously identified and widen your search
to get additional ideas — on what not to do as well as on what to do.

Few original ideas exist on the Web, and your initial site is likely to contain
one or two new ideas at best. The rest of your site may echo things readers
have already seen, and you’re better off if your site brings to mind other good
sites, rather than bad ones. (But be careful. If you start yelling “Bad site! Bad
site!” at your computer screen and swatting it with a rolled-up newspaper,
you may not be allowed to have a working Internet connection much longer.)

Plan for ongoing improvements

As you plan and implement your initial Web page, you will, no doubt, find
yourself creating a “To Do” list of things that you can’t fit into the original site
but want to add later, when time allows. (Creating this list for later use is
great protection against trying to create a supersite right off the bat, getting
stuck in the creation process, and never getting to a point where you can
actually publish your first Web page.) This list is the start of a plan for ongo-
ing improvements.

Some things that you put in a Web site need to be kept current. For example,
if your business Web page shows your company’s quarterly results, be ready
to update it quickly when the next quarter’s results come out. If it lists com-
pany officers, update it as soon as a change takes place. (Unless you’re one of
the people changed — then it’s your successor’s problem!)

Web site information that is obviously out of date is one of the best ways to
leave a bad impression of you or your organization/company and to steer vis-
itors away from your Web site.

Not only do you want to update the Web site, you want to avoid using “Under
Construction” signs and otherwise apologizing for things that aren’t there
yet. Everything on the Web is under construction, which is half the fun of
using the Web and creating pages for it in the first place. You get only one
chance to make a first impression, and an “Under Construction” sign doesn’t
count in your favor.

Decide how you define success

Before you design and create your Web page, define what you believe can
make it a success. For an initial effort, simply putting up something on the
Web that clearly conveys basic information is probably enough. For follow-up
30 Part I: Create a Web Page Today

work, get more specific. Are you trying to reach a certain number of people
or type of people? Will measuring page views — the number of times that
people look at one page from your site — be enough, or do you need some
other measure of response, such as having site visitors send e-mail or call an
800 number? Do you want to create a cutting-edge site in terms of bell-and-
whistle features like fancy graphics and animation — and if so, are you willing
to invest the time and money to make this site happen? Talk to people who
do advertising and marketing in the real world, as well as to people who work
on the Web, and get a sense of what goals they set and how they measure
success in meeting their goals.