There are a heap of free servers which will 'host' your webpage for you. There is a small list to the left, check them out and sign up for an account with one of them. Some may have page builders, or page wizards...if you sign up with a company which has one, ignore the page builders, you're beyond that!!
When you reach their page, you will find a link somewhere that says something like 'free website'. Click on that, then sign up for an account. You will need a username, which will be the name of your site. Don't use your name, as you will end up with a site name like 'http://joeblow.virtualave.net'. Unless of course you want it that way!!
Once you've signed for an account, log into it. You will find a link inside which will be called 'site manager', or something like that. This is where you 'upload' (transfer) your files and html pages to, where they are stored on the net.
Preparing your page for uploading (renaming)...
Now, read this part carefully. The 'main' page, or first page, of your site has to be called
'index.html'. When someone goes to your site, if they type in 'http://joeblow.virtualave.net' it will naturally go to the index.html page. If you don't name your main page 'index.html', then the page that will be seen when someone goes to 'http://joeblow.virtualave.net' is a list of the files and pages you have on your site. So, call it index.html and all will be sweet!
To do this, go into the folder where you saved your 'mypage.html' file, and rename it to index.html. You do this by right clicking with your mouse on the mypage.html file, then choosing rename. Some computers are set to display the extensions of the file. You will know if yours does because it will be called 'mypage.html'. In which case, you need to make sure the '.html' extension is still on it when you rename it. If it's just called 'mypage', then rename it to 'index' (you don't need to type the .html on it as your computer has done that automatically).
Not sure what you're doing? Click
here for step-by-step instructions.
Ready to go? Let's do it then!!
You've renamed your 'mypage.html' file to 'index.html'. At this stage, it's still an html page on your computer. The next step is to 'upload' it, or put it on the net. I know what you're thinking, it's a pretty dorky page to upload. Don't worry, no-one is going to see it as they will only know it's there if you give them the url for it!!! This is purely a means of learning how to do it, you can change the page later.
Back to your account that you signed up for...do you still have that page open? You need to be on the 'site manager' page, or whatever that particular company calls it. Basically, it will contain a list of all the files you have uploaded (none as yet!!). If you scroll down the page a bit, you will find a button called 'browse', or maybe 'upload'. Click on this, and a box will come up giving you the chance to search through your computer for the file you want to upload. Navigate your way to where you saved your 'mypage.html' which is now called 'index.html'. Click on it, then click on open. Or, double click the file, it does the same thing. This will close the navigation box, and will have chosen that file to upload.
On the page in your site manager, you may have a section which says 'target' or maybe 'remote file name'. This will be near the upload button. Click in the box next to this, and you should find that the name of the file gets entered automatically. If not, type in 'index.html'. This states what the page will be called once uploaded, and this one we need to be called 'index.html'.
Once you've done that, hit upload. Once the page refreshes, there should be a file called index.html in the list. If there is...then that's it, you've done it!! You now have a page on the world wide web!!
Not sure what you're doing? Click
here for pics showing how to upload.
Once you've uploaded, open up a browser then type in your web address. This will be either http://www.
the company name (ie yahoo).com/
yourusername or http://
yourusername.companyname.com. Hit go, or enter...and it should bring up your index.html page!
If your index.html page is a really cool page, tell all your friends about it. Give them the address, and tell them you designed it all by yourself. If it's pretty lame, just keep it to yourself, ok?
Sure, I get that...but what if I want more than one page on my site?
The web account you signed up for will have quite a few megs of storage in it. As an html page doesn't take up much space, probably 10k or so, you can have a heck of a lot of pages in your site!
When you want to make a second page, open up notepad and start again. You know, with the <html>,<head> and <body> tags...save it as an html page just like you did the first time around. Only, this time don't call it index.html. Call it something else, like pictures.html, badjokes.html, or mydiary.html. Upload that page just like you did the first one, then the web address for that page will be http://joeblow.virtualave.net/
pictures.html (as this is the path of your file).
Simple, huh!!
If there's any part about this tutorial that you don't understand,
email me and I'll help you out. After all, if you don't understand it, others won't either! This means I need to explain things better, so let me know, ok!
Phew, that's that bit over with! Let's move on to how you put a background and images on your page, in lesson 7!
