This lesson assumes you can browse the web, and that you have a working printer. It should take you about 15 minutes.

OK writing a web page (in HTML) is easy... no really it is.... but a lot of folks like to make it sound harder than it is

*WHY HTML?* The Web is free, and all the folks creating pages that you can ONLY see IF you have their programs (like Netscape always saying "Best Viewed with.... ") their programs are available for free download now, but they wont be... so dont help them take the FREE WEB away. Also there are plenty of people who can't use those programs and they can't see your page if you use them... and you want EVERYONE to be able to see your page, right?

*MATERIALS* You need 3 things to understand the rest of these directions:
1)Web Page Printout:
Go to http://www.waycoolinc.com. ( it doesn't matter if you get all the graphics)
Hit File/Print
2)Code Printout:
Hit File/Save As... and NOTE THE NAME OF THE FILE AS YOU ARE SAVING IT.
Now go into your Word Processor (NOT AOL) and open the file you SAVED and PRINT IT.
3)The Page:
Stay online or be prepared to sign on again and go back to the page.
~ Welcome to the wonderful of HTML, you just stole some code. :-) This works on every html page.~
See why.
It DOES matter when you use CAPITAL letters when you write your Web Page Code. Try to use all lower case for everything.

*TAGS* Lets check out some of the more obvious tags:
anything in < > is an HTML tag, it is telling the page to do something special to what is in between them, they work like this:
<tag>coded stuff</tag>
the "/" tells it when to stop
like the title tag on the code printout:
"<TITLE>"WAYCOOL Inc. PAGE"</TITLE>" If you look on the Web Page, see how "Waycool Inc.Page" is in the title bar of the Window? The tag TOLD it to do that.
Anything between <I> and </I> will be ITALICS (look at the Web Page or Web Page printout), see on code printout:
<I> </I>

..see how it is in italics on the Page?
Anything between <B> and </B> will be BOLD.... etc.

There are a couple exceptions, like <P> just is by itself, it means new paragraph. OK if you followed that then you are thinking, "What are the rest of the tags??????" There is a thorough explanation and bunch of the best tags at the most popular site for HTML, http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/General/Internet/WWW/HTMLPrimer.html

*LINKS* One of the BEST BEST BEST parts of Web Pages is that they LINK to other pages and sites and graphics. So you dont have to write everything that is already on somone else's page, like if you are saying that you belong to a club, you can put a link to the club's page and it appears to be ON your page. And you dont have to make one huge long page that takes forever to load, you can link to your own pages. Nice short pages load fast. The tag that links is:
<A HREF=address of page you want to link to> coded stuff </A>
run you mouse along any words where the mouse pointer becomes a hand, usually they are a different color than the other words, but even pictures where the mouse pointer becomes a hand and see on code printout:
<A HREF= http://thiswillbealongaddress.html >Text or picture where the mouse pointer becomes a hand </A>
The code made the words a LINK.

In most browsers, if you run your mouse along the links on a web page, and look in the lower left hand corner of the page's window, you will see where the links link to if the window is not full screen.
The coded stuff becomes BLUE and is a LINK on the page. When a mouse runs over one of those links it turns from a pointer to a hand.
Now you know how to make WORDS become a link.

*GRAPHICS* If you want to have images on your page you use this format:
<IMG SRC=the address where the image is >
If you want to make the image a link (so when someone clicks on the image, it acts as a link) the format is:
<A HREF= the address of page you want to link to ><IMG SRC=the address of the image you want to link to></A>

A couple notes about Graphic Images and the <IMG SRC= > tag:
-ALT=
Sometimes even when your code is right, people dont get the images, especially if they hit "stop" while a page is loading, so give them something else to read. Try reloading the Page and hit stop before it loads, now you can see the ALT values.
-BORDER=0
Kind of self explanatory, it means no border on the image
-Link on words
Even if you have an image link and an ALT value, some people just feel more comfortable clicking on the blue words... so put some words to link on in your image tags. This is the format:
<A HREF= the address of page you want to link to><IMG SRC=the address of the image you want to link to>link on these words</A>
To see all this in practice in one line, run your mouse along "Designed by Waycool Inc. http://www.waycoolinc.com" then
-see where it will link to in the lower left hand corner
-see on code printout:

	Designed by <A HREF= http://www.waycoolinc.com ><IMG SRC=	http://members.aol.com/waycool1/homegif.gif border=0 ALT="graphics
	@waycoolinc.com...if you are reading this, there is some sort of graphics problem, 
	 if you have graphics capability, please reload ">
Waycool Inc.</A><I> 	http://www.waycoolinc.com</I>"

*BAD NEWS*
As much as HTML is so easy, if you make ANY mistakes, one space where it isnt supposed to be, lowercase instead of uppercase, it can totally screw up your page.

OK now you are ready to go to the site I mentioned before, the HTML Primer (http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/General/Internet/WWW/HTMLPrimer.html) and get all the rest of the tags explained to you. Another FABULOUS site for everything you ever wanted to know about Web Authoring is http://users.aol.com/kyhick/webhelp.html

*WHERE TO PUT YOUR CODE*
FTP
AOL gives most members 2 MGS of FTP space. Think of it as someone saving 2 MGS of space for you on their hard drive in a computer that is set up to turn code into a Web page. (2 MGS is just a bit more space than a floppy diskette) The nice part about that is that even when you are not online, people can access your page and all its images :-). Everyone can read everyone else's FTP. When you put your pages of code up on your FTP, that is when it comes alive.

UPLOADING TO FTP:
Keyword: FTP
click on "go to ftp"
scroll to members.aol.com and click on Connect
Click on OK
click on Upload
type in the path from where you want to upload your file (PC users, its usually like C:\wordprocessor\filename)
and make sure to put the dot in ASCII for your text files (for sound and image files put the dot in BINARY)
when you get the next window Click on "Select File"
and "navigate" your way to the same file on the dialog box
click on SEND, watch it upload :-)
once you are up on your FTP you can use the "delete" and "rename" buttons, and create directories within your FTP

*BAD NEWS*
As much as Uploading to FTP is so easy, if you make ANY mistakes, like telling it to upload from the wrong folder or mistyping the filename, it wont upload right. Check the files you have uploaded by reading them when they are up on the ftp, or downloading them and opening them.

*HOW TO GET THE ADDRESSES TO LINK TO*
Your Web Address is:
http://members.aol.com/yourscreenname
If you want that file to come up when people use your address, it must be called index.html
You can rename it when it is up on your site.
If you dont want to rename it, people will have to access it as:
http://members.aol.com/yourscreenname/filename.html
Your text files HAVE to end with .html (or htm)
Any of your images can be accessed too, like a .jpg on your ftp can be accessed as:
http://members.aol.com/yourscreenname/jpgname.jpg or htmlfile.html

******OK that's about it. Now you can go take the code from ANY page you like and change a few addresses and tags and upload it to your FTP.*******

*PUBLISHING YOUR PAGE*
If you want to have your page listed when people are browsing the web, go to your favorite browsers and look for their "Submit URL" or "Add URL" or whatever and give them your URL (URL = web address =http://members.aol.com/yourscreename. This is also what the META tags are for, to give the browsers something to search on. There is also a fabulous tool for free from Submit It (http://free.submit-it.com/)

Waycool Inc. http://www.waycoolinc.com