Learning the Internet

Adding Cool Touches to your page
In the last article I showed you how to create your page (choose your page name, password, title, slogan, middle, bottom, animations, background, features, etc.) and now I will show you how to make your page interesting, so that visitors will come back again and again. You should plan your webpage(s) carefully and search for a good HTML help page on the internet (e.g. www.funky-chickens.com). Once there, you should highlight codes that produce effects that you like and copy them (Ctrl and C). You then go to your page setup (the place where you make your page) and paste (Ctrl and V) the code to your screen. It may look weird - just a bunch of letters and symbols - but when you save the changes, the code will produce the desired effect (e.g. a chatroom, message board, etc.).

To add links you must use HTML codes but don't worry, you can just copy them from HTML help sites. A good suggestion is to change your page layout (background, pictures, info etc.) with the seasons or special holidays. For example, on St. Patricks Day a good idea is to put shamrock pictures and a green background on your page. When you have picked out cool codes and layouts from HTML help sites you should create sub-pages, pages that are linked to your main page or homepage. These sub-pages should be devoted to a fixed subject such as a chat room.

Other stuff
When you copy HTML codes from other pages make sure that you provide a link to their page (just put their page address on your page) because, if you don't and they find out they will get your site removed. This goes for anything you copy. You can make your own graphics or pictures for your pages with any kind of Paint software (e.g. Paint Shop Pro). Also you can get your visitors to Bookmark your page which means it will be contained in their favourites so they won't forget your URL (your page address) and will keep coming back.

To advertise your website you should sign guestbooks on other people sites and say how much you liked their site so then they will want to visit your site. You can also join banner links and, if you place a websites banner (or advert) on your page, they will advertise your page on lots of other sites. Other ways of advertising is through Classified ads and webgroups where you share links. But the best of all would have to be the submission of your site to a search-engine (e.g. Yahoo, Lycos or Altivista). You do this by searching for a site that lets you submit your site to search-engines. When you discover a suitable site, you sign up and provide 'keywords' that describe your site (the search-engine uses these keywords to help people find your site when they search the Web). And that's it! You now are guaranteed more visitors.

Downloading
Be careful when downloading things from the Internet as they could contain viruses. Also, if they are large, they can take a long time to download, increasing your connection bill and taking up a lot of your computer's memory. It may also be the case that it may not work properly once downloaded or will only work for a limited trial period.

E-mail and attachments
To send files or 'attachments' by e-mail you must have it saved on your computer. When you compose a new e-mail (the address of the recipient, the subject and message) use the tool bar to add the file attachment. Its that simple! If you want to put backgrounds or music to your e-mails then go to www.thundercloud.net and download the latest in e-mail technology.

The World Wide Web (WWW)
In the WWW there is everything you could ever want: books, CDs, free stuff, food, etc. You could live on the Internet! It is a mass of information on anything you could ever need and if you have a website then you are part of the community. A man in Texas, America has promised to live on the Internet for a year. He has locked himself in his house and is ordering everything he needs off the Internet. He is not allowed to leave his house but he is allowed to let people come in. Amazing! So its official, people can live on computers.

Cool websites


www.amused.com	www.bored.com

www.bored.com - this is a good and useful website for the extremely bored and it has lots of fun things to do.
www.freshmidis.com - this is a really good site if you want to hear the latest chart music or theme music to TV shows and films.
www.dailyscript.com - this is a really fantastic site where you can get thousands of TV and film scripts.
www.amused.com - this is rather like 'www.bored.com' ad it gives you tons of links to cool sites and is home to the famous 'Sites that do Stuff'.
World Wide Web Records: The Guinness World Records 2000.

Interesting Facts
~ Hotmail.com is the world's largest free e-mail provider with more that 36 million accounts.
~ The biggest search-engine is Altavista with more than 150 million pages.
~ CNN, based in Georgia, USA, is the most popular Internet News Service. It currently receives on average 3000 user comments per day via their message boards
~ Ultima Online is the biggest online game on the Internet played by about 14,000 players each day.
~ The most mentioned person on the net would have to be President Bill Clinton who has over 1.84 million sites about him. The 2nd most mentioned person is former Baywatch supermodel Pamela Anderson who has 1.54 million sites about her.

Online Gaming
You can play loads of cool games online. It can be costly but its worth it. The effects are really good and it doesn't take long to load. A good site for this is www.shockwave.com where you can play games such as Frogger and Tetris. You may have to download things such as Flashplayer but after that its play all the way. At www.yahoo.com you can play other people from anywhere over the world at Chess or Draughts, but you must have a Yahoo ID. If there are no games you like you can always go to www.amazon.com and order games (or anything else) and get them delivered to your door for discount prices (but remember it costs extra to deliver from USA).

Can you play online games offline? It depends on the game. If it is a game like Tetris that hasn't got much detail, the chances are you will be able to play it offline. The way to do this is you go online and go to the website with the Tetris game. You wait until it is fully loaded and then disconnect. As long as you remain at that website chances are you should be able to play it offline. If it is a game like Frogger with a lot of changing graphics you probably won't be able to play it offline.

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Learning the Internet

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