Since I've been asked many times to help people make their first web page, I thought I would put together some basic tips to get you pointed in the right direction on a road that's never-ending and always under construction.

Before you begin making your page, check with your ISP, Internet Service Provider, to see if they provide you with server space for your home page, very many of them do.  However, if yours does not, there are many servers that will offer you space in exchange for having their (sometimes very annoying) advertisements on your page.  Plus, there is always the option of purchasing web space. And at this time NetEz is offering web space for businesses and home pages at a very affordable monthly fee. If you are interested, you can e-mail me at: Emerald@netez.com.

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Included with the Microsoft 4.0 browser and later versions is an editor called FrontPage Express.  It's free. If you find you do not have it, click on help in your browser and then click on Product Updates. Scroll down the available updates until you find FrontPage Express. Download it and it will install itself for you.

Netscape Composer is also a very easy and understandable editor.  It is part of the Netscape Communicator browser which is also free.

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There are two image formats widely used on the Web: JPEG or JPG (Joint Photographic Expert Group) and GIF (Graphical Interchange Format), which can be static or animated.  JPG files can produce high quality true color images and they can be compressed to a very small size.  However, there are a lot of people with color monitors that cannot support true color; so, JPG images can look grainy. And JPG files cannot be animated. Most color monitors will reproduce GIF files the same way you see them.

Keep in mind that the more images you use or the larger the file size of the image, the longer it will take for a browser to load your page. Slow-loading pages can have a detrimental effect.  A lot of people will not stick around long enough to wait for a page to load even if it's something worth waiting for.

Animated GIFs are great to add a little pizzazz to your page. However, too much animation  can be distracting and will make your page slow-loading.  Browsers tend to slow down while scrolling past animation.  In this case, a little is better than a lot. 

Scanning your own personal photographs or pictures for use on your web page is always an excellent choice and shows your originality.

There are many, many graphics' sites that you can surf to in search of that perfect image or animation and a lot of them are free. To start you off, pick a background from my all new and updated background pages. Just click on the link below.

Backgrounds By Emerald

All my web page graphics are made with the use of two of my favorite image editing software programs, Paint Shop Pro and Xara3D.  Here are the links to their sites for you to check out.

 

For excellent PSP tutorials and tips visit the PSP Interactive Zone

Sound Files

WAV files work much like a tape recording. They can be the actual recording of a complete song or a part of it or any other sound, for that matter.   These files tend to be very large and slow to load.  However, with a digital sound editor wavs can be recorded and saved in a format called mpeg layer 3. This format greatly compresses the WAV with little, if any, loss of quality. The editor that I'm familiar with using is called CoolEdit.  If you're interested in experimenting with editing or making WAVs, here is the link to their site.

Another way to add music on your page is with MIDI files (Musical Instrument Digital Interface).  This is an extremely compressed format for encoding music.   The Music Room is an excellent midi site where you can start your search for that perfect midi for your page.

After you have collected all your graphics and music files that you want to put on your page, save them all in one directory on your C:Drive. Now, just what are you going to do with them? Well, it is time, if you haven't done so already, to open that HTML editor. The two editors I've recommended have excellent tutorials included that take you step-by-step through the actual process of putting together your web page and publishing it.

You can see an illustration of the files mentioned above used on my home page. In comparison to this page, Emerald's Place is a good example of how all the different file types affect loading time.

The links below are to some basic tutorials I've decided to write in answer to some frequently asked questions. More will be added very soon.