Learning the Internet

In my first article I talked about what the internet (www) is and how it works through search-engines, homepage providers, e-mail lists and chatrooms. In this issue I'm going to talk mainly about building your own homepage. I will go through this by using Expage.com as my navigator (most homepage providers are the same).

Creating your Page
First of all, you may have to sign up a form using your details, and then make up your page name (e.g. mikespage) and password. Sometimes when you fill in these you may get a notice saying that your page name or password is already in use, so you just go back and keep typing it in until you get it right! My advice for passwords is to write long passwords containing numbers and letters (e.g m8i5k3e1) so that no one else can make changes to your site. Once you have got your page, a blank screen will appear because you have nothing on your page, yet! Somewhere on that blank screen (the top of it for Expage) there should be icons saying, Title, Slogan, Middle, Bottom, Animations, Features, Background and maybe Directories (see graphic on left).

Title: No prizes for guessing what goes in here. Yep!, here you type in the title of your page (e.g. Mikes Worldz) in any style or colour of writing you chose. In some providers you can make your letters move or add special effects.

Slogan: Here you can type the motto of your site or what is on your site (e.g. chat, songs, etc.). Like the Title you can change the colour, style and add animations to the writing.

Middle: Here is where you type everything you want on your website including links, chat, HTML, Java and anything else. I will talk about HTML later on. You can add pictures here e.g. South Park, The Simpsons, anything you like.

Bottom: Here you can write a message to the visitors (e.g. Thanks for coming or visit all my other links).

Animations: Here you can select what kind of pictures you want in your site but I prefer to get some pictures of my own off other sites because the pictures already there can be very boring!

Backgrounds: Allows you to choose what colour you would like to have on the back of your site.

Features: There is loads of features in different Homepage Providers, but the usual ones are a guestbook, a page counter, a mini quiz (only in Expage), and sometimes jokes.

Directories: This is where you can ''advertise'' your site. To do this click on the directories button (this is not on all homepage providers) and a list of subjects will come up. Pick which one suits your site best. For example, if your site has stuff for teens then put it in teens pages or, if the category you want isn't available, put it in Other or Misc.

Rules on WebPages to make visitors come back again and again

1. Update regularly: If people come to your site and see that it hasn't been updated in a long time they will get bored and go.

2. Use quick page-loads: If people go to a page that takes ages to load because of too many images or graphics, they will leave before it loads no matter how good your page is.

3. Don't use many moving images at the start of page or in any one place. Guests will get distracted and not notice the cool things and maybe leave. At the start make sure you get the point of your page across (that is, what your page is about or what it contains) and then you can start with the effective images.

4. Have links on every page: If you have a number of pages for your guests to visit make sure that at the bottom of every sub-page you have a link back to your main page. If you have a lot of sub-pages with no link back to your main page then it will take a lot of time for visitors to return which will put them off coming back. More about web pages next month!

E-mail
Last month I told you what e-mail was. This week I'm going to tell you how to get an e-mail address in the various providers (Hotmail, Yahoo and 1000's more!). First of all you go to the site of the provider you want (hotmail.com, yahoo.com, etc.). When you have one chosen you will have to sign up a lot of forms! You will be asked to pick a username (e.g. abombinable64) and a password (e.g. n7v4fa). The username will be your e-mail address yourusername@provider.com). You should now be able to use your e-mail. Tell it to all your friends but remember, it's a dangerous world out there and you could get spammed (receive junk mail) !!!! To read your e-mail just go to your providers site, login, and you are ready to send & receive. In some e-mail providers (hotmail) you can get an instant messenger (IM) which will tell you every time you access the net if you have received a new e-mail or not.

Some Questions Answered
What is HTML?
HTML stands for Hypertext Mark-up Language. It is the computer language used to publish stuff on the web. How do I get all those flashy cool effects including chatrooms and scribbleboards on my webpage? For all the above things you need a code called HTML. This code is really long and very hard to understand. If you would like these on your site I would advise that you go to a HTML site and highlight some codes by pressing Ctrl C together and pasting them in your site with Ctrl V.

How come not all the HTML works on my page?
Not all the HTML will work on your page for a number of reasons:
1. There is a page limit to your site so it can only handle a certain number of characters before it refuses.
2. Some Browsers might not support HTML or Java.
3. The copied code may be incorrect.

How come that access to the net can be slow sometimes?
If the Internet is much slower for you at night than in the morning, it is probably because most people are busy getting ready for work or school in the morning and have no time to surf the net. After 6:00 p.m. it will get busier because everyone is coming home and using the Internet, causing it to slow down. Another reason for this difference is that after 6:00 p.m. the connection rate is cheaper than during the day.

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Learning the Internet

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