General Design Considerations

So, you want a Web Site

Why should you build a web site from scratch? Consider, first, some of the other possibilities: You could pay someone to design and write your site for you, but what is the sense in that! If its not what you want or need, you are no better off, besides being out of pocket.

The same, except for the expense, applies if a friend writes your web site. So it seems that you've got to take on the job for yourself.

How about using one of these fancy all-singing all-dancing WYSIWYG editors. Fine, but they are only as good as the day they were written. As the standards for HTML change, they go out of date and leave you with an expensive bill to get the newest version. In addition, somewhere along the line you are going to have to look at the raw stuff of web pages--HTML, otherwise known as 'hyper text mark up language'. One magazine reference said that about thirty per cent of the effort in producing a web site was in tackling HTML. Doesn't it make sense to learn and use this for all of your web site production?

Where do you start

First of all, you need to think about how you want your web site to appear to a visitor. If you have been using the Internet for any length of time, you must have already drawn some conclusions about what makes for the appearance of a good web site.

Secondly, you need to think about the resources that you need to get a web site up and running. These will include a text editor. You can use Windows Notebook, as I did until I had nearly finished the first edition. Some form of checker program for your HTML is essential. Even with great care, some errors will creep in. It's very hard to concentrate on the HTML syntax as well as the content of your web pages.

What this tutorial is all about

In this section of the tutorial, I am endeavouring to fill in the gaps that are not emphasised in some of the other similar resources. For example, there is an excellent HTML tutorial based at 'http://www.pagetutor.com,, but more of that later. The actual mechanics of making changes in your web pages is very easy and this also is dealt with later. Finally, there are other resources that I found useful and will describe later.