HTML BEFORE YOU START

Before You start
This Site came about because years ago I wrote a website about Austin-Healey Sprites and MG Midgets and how to modify them. So many people asked how they could do it, and I created this HTMLCODE site which still gets lots of visitors and raises questions.
This has been written in Netscape Composer (part of Netscape Communicator 4.8) and bits with Notepad.
A lot of Pages are in 2 parts the first half is how the page appears in your browser and the second half is the source code behind it if you aren't interested in this there is a "Home Page" link, your loss, you can sort out a lot of problems looking at the source code. Firefox and Chrome are great for this as when you show source code (Right Mouse Button or View) it colours different bits of code in different colours, if it doesn't make sure "Syntax Highlighting" is on.
It's worth saying if you create a website or any directory/folder on the web and don't create a home page file called index.htm or index.html (in lower case) then anyone can look through all your files in the directory. If you create an index.htm or index.html any browser will automatically find this and open it by default. This is not true on a hard drive, be careful when testing your site on your PC Browsers don't mind about upper or lower case letters and will happily give a directory listing even with a index file. Once it's on the web it's a different story it will always open an index file in any web directory unless it's not lower case. Beware if you put in a link, it must be case specific as the file name/address is. To this end some FTP (upload programs) have a utility which converts all file names to lowercase as they upload them, this is fine but you must make sure all your links were written with this in mind. If you use a program that allows you to pick your files as links then this will use the name as it appears on the PC. Also make sure you don't have any hard drive address' as this only works on YOUR PC (see links). I try to use lower case names for all my files but I have wondered why a link hasn't worked and found a photo I edited and saved as has an upper case ext. (picture.JPG) which was put in automatically and I hadn't spotted. Whilst writing this I had an email to put a link to someone's site and when I went there I found I couldn't see the right hand part of the screen, and there are no scroll bars, I've seen pages that have been written on widescreens that people don't realize you have to scroll sideways to see but this is the first time that it wouldn't let me scroll across!
I have Chrome, Firefox, I.E. and Netscape on my PC, and looking at these files they don't look the same on all so you have to think about what most of your readers see and aim for them. I hope this will help.

FTP Programs
There's lots of these. Basically it's like having 2 Explorer windows open, one your hard drive and one your web Directory. To get it to work you set it up with your ISP host name (ftp.plus.net for Plusnet) then your User ID (username) and Password. You may also want to tell it where to start on your hard drive (c:\www\website for mine) and the initial Remote Host Directory (/htdocs for Plusnet and Force9). Then you connect and it should work at which point you drag or highlight and tell it to transfer your files across. There are options within this which will force lower case names as it transfers them which I find useful. If you lost or corrupted your pages on the PC you can drag them back off the internet through FTP. You can also set up a directory called test and try your pages out there. And as long as you have an index.htm or html in the root directory no one will see it unless you give them the address.
The Web Site
This is slightly cart before the horse, but you don't have to sort this out straight away but you can think about it during the process of writing your pages. I don't use flashy graphics which require the latest browser plugins or downloads. I aim to keep it simple and be viewable by the most people, whatever your potential Customers/readers use.

To Start with I recommend you think about a number of things

1, A name for your site, it doesn't need to be your company name, it could be the service you provide.
 In the case of plusnet names this can only be 5-16 characters and will be followed by .plus.com
i.e. www.webbuilders.plus.com

2, What statement do you want to make about your site, company, club in about 25 words or less. i.e. we make web building and hosting easy and help write your own pages.
 This helps when your pages are submitted to search engines as they read this to help put you in the right category and is often shown by the search engine results when it gives you a choice of sites it has found so if you don't have this line the search engine may not select you as a possible choice for someone's search, they'll just see your web address which may tell them nothing.

3, Keywords to do with your product, services, words that users might type in to a search engine to find your site. i.e. web,site,page,htm,html,host,hosting,www,internet,intranet. Try bad spellings of keywords as well, we all make mistakes.

4, What sort of site do you need
 A single web page of what we do, how to contact or find us,
 A series of pages about us, our history, what were doing now and in the future, a showcase and prices and order forms.

5, Does your site need updating once twice a year or monthly maybe weekly or even daily? You could need it updated immediately when you require it.

6, Look at other pages you like or that are similar to what you want yours to look like, do a "save as" and mess about with it.

7, Think about background colours, themes, fonts etc. You need to create an identity without making it unreadable.

That's it for now once you've written your pages it will make more sense.

Source Code
<!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en">
<html>
<head>
 <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
 <meta name="GENERATOR" content="Mozilla/4.8 [en] (Windows NT 5.0; U) [Netscape]">
 <meta name="KeyWords" content="htm,html,web,www,internet,edit,start,meta,name">
 <meta name="Author" content="nik">
 <meta name="Description" content="What you need to know before you start writing web pages">
 <title>HTML BEFORE YOU START</title>
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="favicon.ico" >
</head>
<body text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFF99" link="#0000EE" vlink="#551A8B" alink="#FF0000">
<blockquote>
<center>
<h1>
Before You start</h1></center>
This Site came about because years ago I wrote a website about Austin-Healey Sprites and MG Midgets and how to modify them. So many people asked how they could do it, and I created this HTMLCODE site which still gets lots of visitors and raises questions.
This has been written in Netscape Composer (part of Netscape Communicator 4.8) and bits with Notepad.
 A lot of Pages are in 2 parts the first half is how the page appears in your browser and the second half is the source code behind it if you aren't interested in this there is a "Home Page" link, your loss, you can sort out a lot of problems looking at the source code. Firefox and Chrome are great for this as when you show source code (Right Mouse Button or View) it colours different bits of code in different colours, if it doesn't make sure "Syntax Highlighting" is on.
It's worth saying if you create a website or any directory/folder on the web and don't create a home page file called index.htm or index.html (in lower case) then anyone can look through all your files in the directory.
If you create an index.htm or index.html any browser will automatically find this and open it by default. This is not true on a hard drive, be careful when testing your site on your PC Browsers don't mind about upper or lower case letters and will happily give a directory listing even with a index file. Once it's on the web it's a different story it will always open an index file in any web directory unless it's not lower case. Beware if you put in a link, it must be case specific as the file name/address is. To this end some FTP (upload programs) have a utility which converts all file names to lowercase as they upload them, this is fine but you must make sure all your links were written with this in mind. If you use a program that allows you to pick your files as links then this will use the name as it appears on the PC. Also make sure you don't have any hard drive address' as this only works on YOUR PC (see links). I try to use lower case names for all my files but I have wondered why a link hasn't worked and found a photo I edited and saved as has an upper case ext. (picture.JPG) which was put in automatically and I hadn't spotted. Whilst writing this I had
an email to put a link to someone's site and when I went there I found I couldn't see the right hand part of the screen, and there are no scroll bars, I've seen pages that have been written on widescreens that people don't realize you have to scroll sideways to see but this is the first time that it wouldn't let me scroll across!
 I have Chrome, Firefox, I.E. and Netscape on my PC, and looking at these files they don't look the same on all so you have to think about what most of your readers see and aim for them. I hope this will help.
 <h2>FTP Programs</h2>
 There's lots of these. Basically it's like having 2 Explorer windows open, one your hard drive and one your web Directory. To get it to work you set it up with your ISP host name (ftp.plus.net for Plusnet) then your User ID (username) and Password. You may also want to tell it where to start on your hard drive (c:\www\website for mine) and the initial Remote Host Directory (/htdocs for Plusnet and Force9). Then you connect and it should work at which point you drag or highlight and tell it to transfer your files across. There are options within this which will force
lower case names as it transfers them which I find useful. If you lost or corrupted your pages on the PC you can drag them back off the internet through FTP. You can also set up a directory called test and try your pages out there. And as long as you have an index.htm or html in the root directory no one will see it unless you give them the address.
 <h2>The Web Site</h2>
 This is slightly cart before the horse, but you don't have to sort this out straight away but you can think about it during the process of writing your pages. I don't use flashy graphics which require the latest browser plugins or downloads. I aim to keep it simple and be viewable by the most people, whatever your potential Customers/readers  use.
  
To Start with I recommend you think about a number of things
  
1, A name for your site, it doesn't need to be your company name, it could be the service you provide.
     In the case of plusnet names this can only be 5-16 characters and will be followed by .plus.com
 i.e. www.webbuilders.plus.com
  
2, What statement do you want to make about your site, company, club in about 25 words or less. i.e. we make web building and hosting easy and help write your own pages.
     This helps when your pages are submitted to search engines as they read this to help put you in the right category and is often shown by the search engine results when it gives you a choice
of sites it has found so if you don't have this line the search engine may not select you as a possible choice for someone's search, they'll just see your web address which may tell them nothing.
  
3, Keywords to do with your product, services, words that users might type in to a search engine to find your site. i.e. web,site,page,htm,html,host,hosting,www,internet,intranet.
Try bad spellings of keywords as well, we all make mistakes.
  
4, What sort of site do you need
     A single web page of what we do, how to contact or find us,
     A series of pages about us, our history, what were doing now and in the future, a showcase and prices and order forms.
  
5, Does your site need updating once twice a year or monthly maybe weekly or even daily? You could need it updated immediately when you require it.
  
6, Look at other pages you like or that are similar to what you want yours to look like, do a "save as" and mess about with it.
  
7, Think about background colours, themes, fonts etc.
You need to create an identity without making it unreadable.
  
That's it for now once you've written your pages it will make more sense.
<center>
<a href="index.htm"><img SRC="but_home.gif" ALT="Home" BORDER=0 title="Home" height=32 width=128></a></center>
</blockquote>
</body>
</html>