02_0672328267_CH01.qxd 8/24/06 10:46 AM Page 3 CHAPTER 1 Creating Your First Web Page 02_0672328267_CH01.qxd 8/24/06 10:46 AM Page 4 4 CHAPTER 1 CREATING YOUR FIRST WEB PAGE Have you ever wanted to create your own to sell products through a website using eBay website, but thought that the task was too Stores, publish content through a blog at daunting? Do you think that only folks with Blogger.com, and share images and prints with years of computer training and experience friends and family via SnapFish.com. have the knowledge necessary for building web While there are literally millions of websites pages? These are common misconceptions that available on the Internet, virtually all fall into many people have. With the right tools and one of three categories: information, creating websites is as easy as pointing and clicking! If you are interested in . Family/Personal Website—Keep your quickly creating a professional-looking website, extended family and friends up to date then you’ve picked up the right book. with the latest happenings of your family. Online Storefront Website—Sell products and services online! A great revenue NOTE stream for home-based businesses. Don’t have any website building experience? . Content Publishing Website—Publish Don’t worry! This book’s CD contains professional your content on the World Wide Web. Be website templates that you can use to build your it your poetry or stories or your political or own website within minutes.You’ll also learn philosophical views, by distributing your how to use existing website applications to sell content online you open it up to a poten- tial world-wide audience of millions. products, publish content, and share images online. As you’ll see, creating websites that fall into any of these three categories is a snap with the provided templates and website tools. To get This book includes a CD with website started, all you’ll need is this book, its CD, and templates, along with software for editing the access to a computer with Internet connectivity. web templates. In this chapter, you’ll look at the fundamental building blocks of websites, and then step through the installation process “Creating websites is a snap with the of Mozilla Composer, the web page creation provided templates.To get started,all software included on the CD. In the next you’ll need is this book,its CD,and chapter you’ll examine the necessary steps to create a website, and see how to move the web access to a computer with Internet page templates from the CD to your website. connectivity.” Chapters 3 and 4 illustrate how the templates on the book’s CD can be customized to create In addition to examining how to build web your own website. pages from scratch, you’ll also learn how to use existing website applications to build your In addition to the website templates, Chapters own website. Chapter 5 looks at how to use 5 through 7 examine online tools that assist in eBay Stores to start selling online, while creating websites. Specifically, you’ll learn how Chapter 6 examines how to start publishing 02_0672328267_CH01.qxd 8/24/06 10:46 AM Page 5 5 THE COMPONENTS OF A WEBSITE content online through the use of a blog. NEW TERM Chapter 7 shows how to share your digital Each website has a unique domain name.To view photography with friends and family, allowing a particular website, a user simply types in the them to view your pictures online, as well as domain name of the website she wants to visit in ordering prints. her browser’s Address bar.We’ll discuss the purpose of domain names in more detail shortly. The Components of a Website Figure 1.1 shows a screenshot of the MSN In your experiences with the Internet you’ve website when viewed through Internet likely visited several different websites. Some of Explorer. the more popular websites in terms of the Notice that Figure 1.1 has the browser’s number of people that visit the site on a daily Address bar circled. To visit MSN’s website basis include Yahoo.com, Amazon.com, simply enter the domain name of the site— eBay.com, MSN.com, and others. www.msn.com—into the browser’s Address bar. In order to visit a website, the computer being That’s all you have to do. used must have an Internet connection. Before you begin creating your own web pages, Virtually all computers in places of business it is vital that you know of the basic compo- have an Internet connection, while millions of nents inherent to all websites. Specifically, all home users connect to the Internet through websites are made up from the following three services provided by companies such as AOL, components: MSN, Earthlink, Juno, or local Internet service . A Web Server—A web server is an providers. Internet-connected computer whose sole purpose is to provide a location for the web pages of a website and to handle NOTE incoming requests for these web pages. Companies that provide Internet connectivity— . A Domain Name—A website’s domain such as AOL, MSN, and others—are commonly name is a unique identifier for a website, referred to as ISPs, which stands for Internet much like your mailing address is a service provider. unique identifier for your home. A website’s domain name identifies the web server on which the site’s web pages are Visiting a website from an Internet-connected located. computer is a cinch. Simply open up a web . Web Pages—A collection of files that make browser and type in the domain name of the up the content of a website. website into the web browser’s Address bar. 02_0672328267_CH01.qxd 8/24/06 10:47 AM Page 6 IDEA GALLERY 6 http://webmonkey.wired.com/webmonkey/reference/browser_chart/ CHAPTER 1 CREATING YOUR FIRST WEB PAGE Serving Web Pages with a Web Server All websites are located on a special type of computer referred to as a web server, which is an Internet-accessible computer with that holds the contents of a specific website. When visiting a website through a web browser, the web browser makes a request to the web server that hosts that particular website. The web server then returns the requested web page to the browser. Finally, the DOES YOUR WEBSITE LOOK RIGHT IN browser displays the web page, as was shown EVERY BROWSER? in Figure 1.1. Webmonkey is a particularly good site for tuto- Figure 1.2 details this interaction from a high- rials on web building.We found a nice article level view. and chart on what standards different browsers support.You may design and test If the details of this interaction seems a bit your website using the browser on your hazy, don’t worry; you don’t need to be computer. It may look fine to you, but what concerned about the specifics. For now, just about all of your visitors and the browsers realize that the contents of a website reside on they’re using? If you check out the browser a remote computer that, like your computer, is statistics on www.counter.com, you’ll find that connected to the Internet. The browser obtains 77% of people are using Microsoft Internet the contents of the website you are visiting by Explorer 6.x and 16% are using Internet making a request to the site’s web server. The Explorer 5.x.That at least narrows it down for web server returns the web pages being you when you’re trying to make sure your site requested, which are then displayed in the can be viewed properly by most people. If you browser. want to accommodate more people than that, pay attention to the standards on Mozilla, Understanding Website Domain Netscape, Safari, and Opera, too. Names Did you know that there are literally millions of websites in existence? In order to visit a partic- ular website from the list of millions, it is vital that all websites be uniquely identified in some manner. The way websites are uniquely identi- fied is by their domain name. 02_0672328267_CH01.qxd 8/24/06 10:47 AM Page 7 7 THE COMPONENTS OF A WEBSITE FIGURE 1.1 The MSN website is displayed in the web browser. FIGURE 1.2 (1) You enter into (2) The web browser sends your web browser’s a request to that website’s Visiting a web page address bar the web server, asking to view involves a request to a domain name of a the website’s home page... website... web server. (3) The web server Web Browser sends back the MSN’s on Your Computer requested web page... Web server (4) The returned web page is displayed in the web browser... Index.htm 02_0672328267_CH01.qxd 8/24/06 10:47 AM Page 8 8 CHAPTER 1 CREATING YOUR FIRST WEB PAGE A domain name is, ideally, an easily remem- Getting Around a Website bered phrase, like eBay.com, Yahoo.com, or A website is composed of a number of web CNN.com. All domain names end with some pages. Each web page is uniquely identified by sort of extension, which is a period followed by a URL. To visit a particular web page, you can two or more letters. Most domain names end enter the web page’s URL in your browser’s with extensions like .com, .net, or .org. Other Address bar. However, as you know from extensions are available, though.