How To Create WWW Pages

To create pages for viewing through WWW, you need to do the following three things:

1. Collect and prepare all the text, graphics, sounds, and video you wish to use in your page(s)
2. Convert your text (and the links in the text to your graphics, sounds, and video) into HTML documents
3. Contact the Web Administrator when your completed pages are ready to be made accessible world-wide

Information on each of the three steps listed above follows. A very comprehensive guide to learning how to publish WWW documents is available by clicking here.

1. Write the text for your pages in any text editor -- TeachText for Mac users or NotePad for Windows users is fine -- and save each file as a text file (ASCII).

• SPARC, Macintosh and Windows NT Users: Do not use any spaces in the file names, and put ".html" (without the quotes) at the end of each document name. For example, your personal home page might be called "MyHomePage.html"

• Windows (non-NTFS) Users: Do not use any spaces in the file names, and put ".htm" (without the quotes) at the end of each document name. Also, be alert to the eight character limit for names imposed by DOS and Windows. For example, your personal home page might be called "HomePage.htm"

Sounds should be in the .au (uLaw) format. Movies should be in .mpeg format.

2. To convert your plain (ASCII) text documents into WWW documents, you must format them into a special format called HTML. The recommended tool to do this on Macs and Windows machines is called Simple HTML Editor.

• Macintosh users, click to download Simple HTML Editor directly to your machine.

• Windows users -- A Windows program called HTMLEDIT has been developed in order to make HTML simpler for novices. Another very good Windows program that enables novices to build HTML files is called HTMLASST. Users of Microsoft Word for Windows Version 6.0 might be interested in downloading a Word 6.0 macro template called GT_HTML that has been developed at Georgia Tech which enables users to create HTML files directly from Word documents. Users of Microsoft Word for Windows Versions 2 and 6 might also be interested in downloading the Word 2/6 macro template called CU_HTML that has been developed at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

• SPARC users -- I don't know of any good HTML editors. If anyone does, please let me know how to get to it.

When you have finished formatting your document, check it by launching Mosaic and using the Open Local command on the File menu. That allows you to open specific HTML files on your local hard drive. That way you can test your pages and adjust the look and content before actually posting them.

3. Finally, once you are ready to have your files linked to from an existing WWW page or pages, send e-mail to the Web Administrators at those sites. For example, if you wanted a link created to your page at the main Web site for UT-Austin, you would send email to www@wwwhost.cc.utexas.edu. The Administrator will need to know your IP address so the link into your space can be created; which document you want to be the home page (the first one people connect to); and how you want your name listed for the link.