DLTK's Crafts for Kids
How to Build a Content Website – Part 2
SOFTWARE FOR THE WEB:
The basic language of the internet is called HTML (Hypertext markup language)
(Side Note: Nowadays, there are different types of programming languages that people use to build
webpages. Dynamic pages can be built with ASP, JavaScript, XML and likely others. All of the 'custom' things
(math pages, tracer pages, cards, bookmarks, etc) on our site are built like this. These are nice to strive for some day, but can't be done
before you've mastered HTML so I'd ignore it for the time being).
There are a lot of software packages out there that give you a 'what you see is what you get' (WYSIWYG) view of HTML.
You don't have to know the language to use these packages. You just point and click.
Here are a few of the software packages available:
MicroSoft Expression Web - this is what I use. It's likely not the
best on the market, but it is a Microsoft product and works just like the
others. I was very familiar with Word, Excel, etc. And the software is quite
user oriented so this was a good choice for me.
Macromedia Dreamweaver - all of the 'real' programmers I've talked to say
this is the best. But, if you're not a programmer (I'm sure not), you
may find it a bit harder to use.
Notepad or a Word Processor of some sort - if you don't mind writing
code, you can skip all the WYSIWYG software packages and just write HTML
code from scratch.
Nowadays you can also use "blogger software" like Wordpress to build
your website.
OK, so since there are all of these WYSIWYG packages available does that mean you can ignore HTML?
Nope!
LEARNING HTML:
Why do you want to learn HTML? Well, you don't have to be able to write it in your sleep, but you should have a basic grasp of it. If you want
to do anything fancy on the internet, including adding advertising to your site, you'll need to have some understanding of it.
My first 50 webpages or so were written in Notepad from scratch in HTML. It takes a lot longer, but you learn what can be done and what
can't
I learned HTML from http://www.vu.org They had a fairly good course
which was free at the time (I believe it now costs $15 USD for 3 courses).
QUESTIONS TO ANSWER:
1) What software am I going to use?
2) What is a tag? (you'll know the answer if you've read the Intro to HTML course)