Resources

This first blog entry is an overview of the process, including links for necessary tools.

Note: When you make your own blog on blogger.com or any other free blog site, make sure to select the HTML tab (not Compose) and use the same markup tags that you have learned to use from w3schools.com. Get into the habit of using HTML whenever you have the opportunity for practice, including email markup. Always look for the HTML tab. If you try HTML mark-up for email, send yourself a test copy first to see how your mark-up will appear to the recipient.

Here are the free online resources I use. Some of them offer applications to download.

The Home for The Pages

Get a domain. Find a host to register a domain (something.com) for you and host it for a total of not much over 100.00 per year. I don't spend more than about 150.00 per year total on my web sites. My favorite most economical host provider, giving me email accounts, online space, tutorials, and free applications: bluehost.com

Free Tutorials

Start learning a little code. If all you need is a simple business-card web page, you can do it with HTML (hypertext markup language for content) and CSS (cascading style sheets for layout and appearance). If you want to interact with your users, maybe play games or do calculations for them, you will need at least some Javascript. If you want to master the universe online, all you need is PHP (hypertext preprocessor) and MySQL (a free open source structured query language). PHP is a comprehensive programming language to get the most out of online computing, not only taking the place of Javascript, it is used to create the most dynamic web pages. (It is a server-side language, unlike Javascript, meaning that it processes code on your server before it gets to your user's machine. Javascript is processed on your user's machine, which saves your server processing work, but takes the code out of your total control.) Experts use PHP to instantaneously build unique web pages depending on user input. For the most interactive web pages, you need a structured query language like MySQL to create and manage databases for online use, for example for product inventory records or customer data storage. My go-to online reference for basic HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, and MySQL: w3schools.com

A Word Processor for Web Pages

Start writing code. Download a text editor. Probably the most popular free text-editing program for writing and editing in all the high-scripting languages for the internet: notepad-plus-plus.com

Learning Models

Find learning examples. Go to any web page, at first the simpler the better, especially private pages like the one you want to make. Find the page source option in your specific browser. In Google Chrome, in the far upper right, select the drop down menu option for Tools and then View source. You may have to hunt for this view option in other browsers. (In later versions of Internet Explorer you have to use the Developer Tools in Settings. In Firefox, you can prefix any URL with view-source: such as view-source:http://www.eslwise.com). Then you can see the HTML markup. The more commercial the site, the more complex the mark-up. Keep in mind that what you see is how your browser renders the page on your computer, not how the page is originally written, so viewing the source of pages with "server-side" script will not show you that script. But you will learn a lot of basic HTML this way, and you will see examples of all kinds of poor markup, so don't imitate everything you see!

Testing Pages

If your page inludes only HTML markup, and the images and CSS exist in the same folder on your local machine, open that folder and try double clicking on your index.html file. If you are lucky, your browser will show you what index.html will look like online. I am able to do this because Google Chrome is my default browser. Maybe Firefox will work too. Let me know if it does. :)

Publishing

Upload pages to your remote folder with your host. Download an FTP (file transfer protocol) application. An extremely popular free application is from the Mozilla people: filezilla

Perfecting

Check for errors in your code. As you become more experienced and use more third-party plug-ins, you will know the difference between a serious fundamental code error and code that certain internet authorities just don't approve of yet but still work. A lot of bad code will slow or crash the pages you want to serve to users. A big operator online for validation: w3validator.org

Tracking

See the traffic your pages get. An essential tool: Google Analytics