What is HTML?
A Web page is a text document that uses special hypertext commands. The language used to program a Web page is called HTML, or Hyper Text Markup Language. A Web page contains hypertext and is saved as an HTML document. An HTML document looks very much like a word processing document. It can contain text, graphics and even multimedia, but it also contains powerful links or shortcuts to other pages even if those pages are at other sites around the world. A link is identified with an underlined and highlighted word. Graphics can also be links.
How do I test my links?
Load the page in any web browser and click on links to check them. It can never hurt to double check your links. Search engines remove your website from their directory if your web site has broken links.
You can also use a free link checker at http://validator.w3.org/checklink.
Do I have to know HTML to design my site?
You can use "what-you-see-is-what-you-get" HTML-editors like FrontPage, Netscape Composer or even Word to create your pages without knowing HTML. Result? - Often, something non-functional, with dull design, non-compatible with more than one browser. The better you know HTML, the more stylish, functional and easy-to-navigate your site will look, and you will have more visitors and customers as a result. HTML is not as hard as it looks in the source code.
The best choice is to make your page in a good "drag-and-drop" editor like Macromedia DreamWeaver (to save yourself typing time), and then edit the code by hand in order to fine tune it for your specific design.
I need HTML help, can you point me in the right direction?
Here are some great links for HTML help:
What page is loaded when I go to http://www.your-domain.com?
Our servers are configured to read index.html as the default homepage, so people browsing your site can simply type http://www.yourdomain.com rather than having to specify a filename, such as http://www.yourdomain.com/homepage.html
It is strongly advised that you have an index.html file in each directory of your website. Directories without it allow browsing through your files, possibly exposing to public view files not intended for that purpose.
How do I fix it if I didn't name the first file index.html?
You would have to rename the first file to index.html. Don't forget to update your links. Otherwise, from the other pages that link to the first page your visitors will get a "Page not found" error message.
My site looks good on my hard drive, but after uploading it the images are missing
and the links are broken?
For maximum reliability and uptime we are running Linux on all our web servers. Please keep in mind that Linux is a case sensitive OS which means you will have to keep track of lowercase and uppercase letters. For example, 'index.html' and 'INDEX.HTML' are different files under Linux, whereas under Windows or DOS they would count as the same file.
This creates a problem when transferring your site from your hard drive (Windows or DOS) to one of our servers. It can often result in pages having broken links and missing images.
If you encounter this problem, check to make sure that your hyperlinks in your web pages correspond to the exact filenames on your website. If they do not match, you can either modify your hyperlinks in your web pages or rename your files with an FTP program so they match your hyperlinks.
If you are referring to your pages with .html extension in your hyperlinks, make sure the filename actually ends with a .html extension.
Another problem encountered is that you are referring to web pages and images on your hard disk. For example, <a href="c:/webpage/welcome.htm">My Web Site</a>
The above hyperlink should be replaced with the one below it:
<a href="welcome.htm">My Web Site</a>.