Web+Site+Without+HTML

toc When websites were first created, creators had to know a computer language called HTML which stands for Hyper Text Markup Language (that info is in case you get on Jeopardy). Now you can do the fun part (creating) without having to learn the challenging part (HTML). So this is how to do a website quickly.

=Making A Web Page= Go to: []

This is a free WYSIWYG web design tool. It works a lot like Microsoft Word and other similar word processors although it has a few extra buttons, such as the ability to create a link to another page in your website or another website on the web.

If the save button were fully functional, you could save your work. One of the things about using websites like this is that sometimes you have to work around problems. So here is a workaround:

Hit the Source button. You'll get to see the html for your website--pretty cool!

//Newbie Alert:// //At this point, I am trying to find an easy way to get your text onto your computer so it will open up in a web browser program. So far I have tried Microsoft Word, figuring that people pretty much know that program. But so far, my limited skills are not making that work. I have some other ideas that I will try, such as using "Notepad" or the equivalent that is on practically all computers.//

Okay, here is what I found and just tested:

Find your note pad. On Windows machines, it will be in the Accessories and hopefully someone will amend this to tell us how to find it in Macintosh and Linux (don't have my Ubuntu machine with me right now).

Paste your code onto the note pad.

Hit Save As and now you are ready to do the one thing that will make this work:

Type in the name of your file such as "MyWebPage" and follow that with a .html (a dot and the letters "html" with no spaces)

Here's how your file name will look: mywebpage.html

Hit save and then find the file. Click on it and your web browser will open showing you your page.

=Putting Your Website On the Web= At this stage, your web page resides on your computer--others will not be able to access it. There are at least a couple of ways to get it on the web:

Cheap but not free
Get hosting space from your school system or buy it yourself. This may be somewhere around $10/month and some places will be cheaper and allow you to have a discount for buying a year's worth. Getting hosting space from your school would be ideal.

Register a domain (the name of your website) such as ohioetc.org, which is the domain we bought for the Ohio Educational Technology Consortium. This costs about $12 for a few years (one time payment).

Free
Get a wiki. On the "Edit" bar, hit "Widget" and then "Other HTML." Paste your notepad file in the space. Hit Okay and then you will see something that says "Other Widget" or something like that. Save the whole wiki page (Save on the edit bar) to see your web page. Now people can get to it through your wiki address.

=Extensions= As you play more and more with this, you may start to notice some patterns in the html code. For example, you may notice that images have information about width and height, often using pixels as a measurement. Change these and see what happens.

You may also notice that for every there is a that more or less operate like parentheses. You could try adding things to the code, keeping this format in mind, and then see what happens.

You can use this website: http://htmledit.squarefree.com/ to check out your code. Just paste it in the blue part and you'll see what the code does in the white part. This provides immediate feedback which makes it a valuable tool for learning.