- Should I Create My Web Site Online?
- Where Are the Wizards?
- What Does It Take to Make a Basic Page with a Wizard?
- Understanding Publishing
- Summary
- Q&A
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
What Does It Take to Make a Basic Page with a Wizard?
That depends. Each of the many page generators online is a little different, but no matter. In every case, all you have to do is follow directions; every wizard tells you exactly what to do as you go along.
Just to give you a sense of what's involved in building a page online with a wizard, here are the basics of using the Web Site Builder, a wizard that AT&T WorldNet offers its subscribers.
As an AT&T subscriber, you start out at the AT&T WorldNet home page. On that page, you click the Free Web Page link and then read the guidelines page, as shown in Figure 3.4.
If you scroll to the bottom of that page and click the Signup button, a page appears on which you can click a Yes button to agree to the rules listed on the preceding page.
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Figure 3.4 Most
wizards start off by telling you the rules.
Clicking on another Yes button gives you still another page (see Figure 3.5), explaining that you must agree to have cookies stored on your computer in order to create a Web page here. Cookies are small files that contain enough information that a Web site you interact with can identify you. Clicking the Continue button means that you will accept cookies, and you're then moved forward.
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Figure 3.5 To
build a Web site with some wizards, you must agree to the storing of cookie
files on your computer.
At long last, you arrive at the Personal Web Pages @att.net page (see Figure 3.6), where you begin building your page. If you scroll halfway down the page, you have the chance to type keywords to describe your site. These keywords help search engines find your page whenever a visitor enters a search term related to your site. If you scroll down farther, you have the chance to enter all sorts of optional information about yourself and your site, used by the AT&T search engine to help WorldNet users find your page.
At the bottom of the page shown in Figure 3.6, clicking the Make Changes button opens the page on which you can choose layout options for your page (see Figure 3.7).
Begin by choosing the type of Web site you want to make: community, individual, family, or business. Your choice determines which of the AT&T templates the wizard uses for your page.
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Figure 3.6 The
Personal Web Pages page, where you begin building your page with the wizard.
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Figure 3.7 Choose
your page's title, colors, and other options on this page.
You type a name for your page in the box provided and then scroll down to reveal the color schemes you can choose for your page (see Figure 3.8).
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Figure 3.8 Choose
colors for your page from the options provided.
After choosing a color scheme, you scroll to the bottom of the page and click the Create My Web Site button. The Site Features page appears (see Figure 3.9). On this page, you can choose to add to your page any of a variety of useful objects. For example, you may choose to provide your visitors with a search tool or create a guest book so that users can tell you about themselves.
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Figure 3.9 Here,
you can choose site features, such as a search tool on your Web page.
When you finish making changes to your site features, you click the Make Changes button at the bottom of the Site Features page. You can then click the Publish link near the top of the page to create and view your finished page, which at this point will look something like the one shown in Figure 3.10.
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Figure 3.10 Your
new Web site, all done (sort of).
From here, you can click the Admin link at the top of the page to open dialog boxes in which you can add more to your page: Insert an image file for the photo (you will learn about image files in Hour 13, "Getting Pictures for Your Page") and add more text, for example. The main dialog box looks like the one shown in Figure 3.11.
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Figure 3.11 The
Admin page allows you to further customize your site.
Whattaya think? Yes, it's a Web page, online, and it took only a few minutes to make. It's not a bad way to start, but it comes nowhere near what you can create if you use a Web authoring program as described in the remainder of this book. Read on.