|
Home
> Articles
> Web Building>
Website Construction for Absolute Beginners
Website
Construction for Absolute Beginners
BY Ronnie
Tucker
Part
6 of 6
READ PART
ONE AND PART
TWO AND
PART
THREE AND
PART
FOUR
AND
PART
FIVE
Website
Construction for Absolute Beginners.
Part
6 of 6
'And
now... the end is near... and now I face... the final curtain...'
Hello,
and welcome to the final part of a six part guide that will teach
all you beginners how to construct a website using Macromedia
Dreamweaver.
Part
5 was mainly theory on compression.
Part6 is all about getting your site online and, equally important,
how to let people find your site!
So...
lets get this show on the road and get your site online.
Ok.
So, your website is complete and its sitting there on your hard
drive.
How do you get it onto the wonder that is the Internet??
On the internet your website must be stored on a server.
For now, think of a server as being the same as web space.
Web
space?
Web space is where your site will be saved.
Someone has to keep your website up for you.
There
are two ways of keeping your website up and running.
1)
Buy some web space.
2) Get some free web space.
I
know what your thinking!
'Ooh! He said the magic word...free!'
But
nothing in life is free...
There
are pro's and con's to both paying for space and getting free space.
The
con with paying for space is that, naturally, it costs you money.
But the pro is that since your paying for it your website should
be up and available 99.9% of the time.
The
con with free web space is that to make money the supplier of the
free space will more than likely plop an advert on your carefully
crafted pages. Sometimes this is ok, its only a small ad. But sometimes
is a whopping great big banner that spoils the look of your site.
Another thing to consider with getting free space is this: will
they allow frames? Some free providers don't allow frames. This
is because for every page you put up they add an advert to it. If
they add an advert to your frames page? Well... bang goes your site.
With the frames page loading up a banner instead of your other pages
your site may not even work.
The obvious pro with free space is that... well... its free!
The
basic rule is this: if you can afford it, buy some space.
Web space can be as little as $8 a month for something huge like
500meg!
And remember: space is space. You can store as many websites as
you like in your web space!
For
now though we'll go with the free space option.
And
where do i get this mystical free space??
There are a number of companies that supply web space.
AngelFire
Yahoo!
and many more.
Try searching for free web space on Google
or Yahoo.
Taking
Yahoo! as a quick example:
This is Yahoo!:
You see the read arrow? It's pointing to the GeoCities option.
(NOTE: GeoCities used to be a seperate company
but Yahoo! bought it up and its not part of Yahoo!)
Click
the GeoCities link, you'll see this:
Don't be fooled by the $'s, the free space is there, at the side.
Where my red arrow is pointing to...
Click
the 'Sign up for a free web site' link and then 'Sign up' with Yahoo.
The
name you sign up with becomes part of your address.
So if you sign up as IamTheGreatestPersonInTheWorld
your web address will become:
http://www.geocities.com/IamTheGreatestPersonInTheWorld
NOT
the most pleasant of addresses is it?
Best to keep your username to something short.
Ok,
after you've done all this you'll find out that Yahoo! Doesn't allow
FTP access.
Whats
FTP?
FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol.
Don't
get upset by that big long name, it just means sending and receiving
files.
Take deep breaths... count to ten...
So
if you sign up with Yahoo! You can't use Dreamweavers built
in file transfer system.
Thats one down side. But... hey... for free i'm sure you can live
with it.
The Yahoo! system is easy to use, you just use their File Manager,
tell it where your files are on your computer and it'll take a copy
of them from your computer and store them on their server and thats
you online!
But
the Dreamweaver file system is far easier to use so when you sign
up for free web space try and get one with FTP access ok?
I'll
use my own website as an example of how i upload files.
In
Dreamweaver click the Window menu and choose Site Files...
This
is Dreamweavers built in File Transfer system.
I've labelled four things on the screen shot above:
1)
This menu contains the names of all the Sites that you've defined.
Remember how, in Part1, we set up a new site? See? Preparation does
pay off!
2) This is where your files will be dragged to when you connect
to the server of whoever is providing you with your web space.
3) This is the directory of your website. This has all your
files in it. Both HTML and images...
4) When you are ready to drag your files across to the server
you click this Connect button.
Ok...
so, you've signed up for your web space, your ready to upload your
files to the server...
But
where IS the server??!!
Ahh...
check out the help on the providers web site, the FTP address is
usually in the format:
ftp.servername.com
or
something similar.
But
you need to give that address to Dreamweaver so that it knows where
to send your files to...
So click your menu item: Site then choose Define Sites...
Make sure that your site name is highlighted in blue.
It not, left click it to select it.
Now click the Edit... button...
This is your Local Information.
Site Name: is just that... the name of your site!
Local Root Folder: this is where your files are stored.
HTTP Address: this is what people will type in to their browser
to visit your site
(usually the web space provider will tell you your Address or URL
when you complete the sign up process)
But
click the Web Server Info on the left
This is the Site Definition for your web site.
Server Access: click the 
and choose FTP
FTP Host: this is the FTP/server address that you just got
Login: this is usually the same as your username
Password: well... this is your password!
(NOTE: to have Dreamweaver save off your password tick the box beside
Save)
Leave the bottom two boxes with no tick mark.
And
now click OK.
Right,
now that Dreamweaver has your preferences saved off, goto the Site
Files window again and click the Connect button.
If
you've entered your FTP info properly you'll get:
(minus the big red arrow of course!)
Since you'll have nothing on your web space to start with you'll
see very little on the left side of the Site Files window...
On
the left is the contents of my website. This is server
side.
On the right is the my website but on my computer.
To
get files from the computer to the server just drag and drop the
files from right to left.
Left
click and hold onto the file/folder and drag it across to the left
side of the window and then let go of the left button.
(Hint: to select a lot of files left click
one file once, hold down Shift, and click another file above/below.
Dreamweaver will select all the files in between).
You'll
see a blue bar at the bottom right of the screen, this is Dreamweaver
sending your file to the server.
Once
all your files are dragged across your website is now offically
on the internet!
Hurrah!
To try out your website:
Load up your browser and type in your URL/HTTP address into it and
press Enter.
Your website should now show up!
Great!
It
doesn't??!!
You dare question my powers??!!
Did
you make sure your very first page was called index.htm??
Check with the web space provider.
Some want the index page to be called index.html
I even had one where it had to be called default.htm!
(very unusual!)
BEWARE:
since most web servers are based on Unix rather than Windows, they
are case sensitive.
Index.Htm is NOT the same as index.htm
even Index.htm is different from index.htm.
So,
you've now got your site online.
How do people find your site??
Well...
if its your friends then you can email them the address of your
site.
But how do complete strangers come across your site??
This
is where Search Engines come into play.
Google, Yahoo, AltaVista...
They're all Search Engines.
You type in a search criteria and they'll give you sites that match
your criteria.
They have a massive database of sites.
How do they get that massive database??
By people, like you, creating sites and submitting your address
to them.
One
important point of Search Engines is the ToC.
Terms of Condition.
Some
search engines might not allow pornography, some might not allow
sites that are Under Construction (ie: half done), some might not
allow sites with any potentially libelous information present.
So READ the ToC for each search engine
incase your site is one of the sites disallowed...
So
lets quickly run through submitting to the three main engines.
Yahoo, AltaVista and Google.
This
is Yahoo!
Scroll down to the middle of the page...
See the categories that Yahoo has on its page?
(i've put a pink box over them with an arrow pointing to the pink
box)
The
idea is to click a category then a sub-category until you decide
this is where your site should go. So...
I
think my own site would be best under:
Computers
& Internet, Computer Generated Art@, 3D Art, Artists...
and
at the bottom of that page is:
You see the Suggest a Site link? Give it a click:
This
is where search engines get their money...
Not from you though, but if you wanted put into the Yahoo! listings
by next week you need to pay them to do it.
Since the site is free and we want listed for free it can take weeks
if not MONTHS to get into the Yahoo! search engine since
they are so busy with submissions.
Anyway,
we're not paying them so click Standard Consideration.
if your sure your in the right place to put your site click Continue...
Now
you fill in your details, click Submit and wait for Yahoo
to put you in their database.
Now
we'll submit to AltaVista
...
Down
near the bottom right of the screen:
Right
where my arrow is pointing it says Submit a Site.
Click there...
AltaVista,
like Yahoo! needs to earn money and, once again, will submit your
site quickly. But for a price.
We're cheap skates so we'll go for the Basic Submit option...
This
is where AltaVista differs from Yahoo!
They have an extra check.
This check is to try and stop people using
programs to submit one set of criteria to tons of search engines.
Read the 4 steps on the page.
Basically you enter into the top box the letters you see on the
page.
Then enter your web address and email address then click Submit.
And
finally lets submit to Google...
Click
the right most tab. Directory:
Scroll
down to the bottom of the page:
At
the bottom of the page is a green box.
In that box is the magic words: Submit a Site.
This is Google's instructions page.
Google is similar to Yahoo!
Choose the category you want and submit your url.
But first, click: Proceed to the Open Directory home at dmoz.org
Now
it's time to find your category.
I'll go for:
Computers,
Graphics...
Now
we click the add URL option...
Now...
enter your URL, name, email address and a short description.
And finally press Submit.
There...
now all you need to do is wait until your address is put into the
search engines' database.
To check you just search for your site name.
If it doesnt show up, then your not in the database yet.
Be
patient!.
*sniffle*
we'll... we've reach the end of the guide. *sniffle*
It's been lots of fun writing this and receiving emails from people
who've enjoyed the tutorials makes it all worth while.
I've finished Web Construction for Absolute Beginners Guide...
But...
as someone once said...
'I'll
be back...'
Until
then...
Have
fun!
Ronnie.
email me
or
visit my website:
Hi
there, i'm Ronnie Tucker and I live and work in Glasgow, Scotland
(UK). I am entirely self taught in art and i've been using 3dsMax
for over 7 years now. (Infact I was using when it was called 3ds4!
Years before it was called 'Max'!) I've had images published in
the UK art magazine Computer Arts (issue 9), and helped produce
a computer animated short for a large car firm in the United States.
I use a large variety of software: 3dsMax, Photoshop, Premier, Poser4
and various plugins, but I still use pencil and paper whenever i
can.
My
friend and I are also looking to animate our characters Worm &
Lump for TV.
If you can help us out in any way, please email
me.
Worm & Lump
©2001-2002, Ronnie Tucker & Jamie
Byers.
I
work freelance and am always available for work.
Feel free to email me
regarding work or articles...
|
