Writing a Web Page
Not as hard as you think...
What made the web so special at its creation, you may have heard, is it's very structure; that these documents became so easily accessible to more people at once than ever before.
What made them so extraordinarily accessible was not just the idea of a general access network, but that the documents were written in Hyper Text Markup Language.
It was this HTML that allowed documents to be linked by a click.
But the linking of documents by a click is all the magic there is.
Everything else is just words and pictures.
You can create a web page using any text editor, such as Windows' Notepad.
The World Wide Web has become so prevalent in recent years, that many office programs include the ability to save any regular document as an HTML document.
For instance, if you were to write a paper in Microsoft Word, all you need do in order to change that document into a web page is click "File", then "Save As" and change the file type as "Web Page" or "*.html"
There are programs available for reasonable prices that are designed specifically for writing a web page.
Two popular examples are Microsoft FrontPage, and Dreamweaver.
These programs make it as simple to make a web page as it is to write a word document.
If you choose to write your own web page, here are some helpful sites to get you started:
WEB STYLE GUIDE, 2nd edition
And, WEB PAGES THAT SUCK
If you choose to hire a web designer, we recommend that you shop around.
Compare prices and services offered, and ask to see a portfolio to see if the designer's style fits your needs.
Your Homepage
Our web server is Unix based, utilitarian and efficient.
Your virtual (actual) web address will be http://www.imt.net/~username/.
The www.imt.net indicates that the web directory is located on the Internet Montana server, the ~ (tilde) and username indicates that the files you are looking for are located in that user's home directory.
When one enters that web address, all it really does in essence is open up that user's folder on the IMT server, just as you open up a documents folder on your computer.
To have a web page automatically display, instead of a list of files, you will need to have one of your files (your home page) named index.html.
Microsoft software, in particular Microsoft FrontPage, will most often name a home page as index.htm, dropping the final 'l'.
Be sure to rename your home page index.html while you are editing your files before you post them on the server.
Also, UNIX IS case sensitive.
Remember this when including hyperlinks in your pages and transferring files.
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