Beginner's Guide to HTML
PART 1
Introduction
Creating
a Web Page
Documents that are to be published on the World Wide Web are typically coded in a document formatting language called HTML (HyperText Markup Language). There are programs nowadays that will do the coding for you — Netscape Composer, Microsoft Front Page, and Macromedia's Dreamweaver, to name a few. This documention describes how to do the coding yourself. This means adding codes (called "tags") to your text to indicate such things as headings and paragraph breaks. Additional codes (called "anchors") provide links to information at some other location. The next section (Part 2: Creating an HTML File) provides basic instructions. Only very basic coding is covered, but sources for additional information are given (see Part 6: How to Learn More).
After you've created a file, you'll want to take a look to see that it looks right when viewed in Netscape (or some other Web browser). Part 3 of this documentation provides instructions for saving and viewing your HTML file.
Publishing Your Web Page
For the rest of the world to see your Web page, you'll have to transfer (upload) it to your CSUN network account (e.g., xyz12345). If you don't already have an account (or don't know if you have one), you can follow online instructions at http://www.csun.edu/itr/guides/account.html to obtain an account or find out what your account number is.
Your HTML documents must be placed in a particular subdirectory (folder) in your account (called public_html) and permissions must be specified which allow "the world" to see the information. "General Instructions" for setting up your account publishing web pages are available separately at:
http://www.csun.edu/itr/guides/webpublishing
Additional Information
Instructions for updating/modifying a Web page (Part 4 ), some style suggestions (Part 5 ), sources for additional information (Part 6 ), and coding for two sample Web pages (Appendix) round out the basic documentation regarding Web page creation.
Next: Creating an HTML File
August 14, 2003
Prepared by Gail Said Johnson, User Support Services
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