The fact is, anyone can get a web page up, and who cares what it looks like? What does matter is the reason you put the page up. Maybe you want to share a bit about yourself with the world. Perhaps you want to put a site up so your friends and family can keep up to date with you. Maybe you have a hobby or interest that others might like reading about. One of the best things about the web, for me at least, is it allows people to express themselves. It's a form of art, and it doesn't really matter if your page is ugly, or beautiful, or whatever. Putting a page up is an expression of beauty in itself, and be damned the critics! The tools linked to above, Geocities and Netscape Gold, provide you with free ways of getting your pages up on the net for the world to see, and you don't need any more experience than the ability to use a word processor.

Tip Number Two - Content Content Content
OK, you've got a page up, and what does it have? Links only? Well, I said in tip one that just getting a page up is a thing of beauty, but come on! You can do better than copying your bookmark file! We're talking content here, bay-bee!

Content is King. You'll hear that often in web discussions, and it's true. People don't want to visit web sites just to find links to other sites. You've got a web page, why not write about something? Maybe your favourite hobby. Maybe a little ditty about your kids. Perhaps some commentary about your sports team's latest exploits? You can even put up your great American (or Canadian!) novel, and ta-da, you're published! The key is content - you need it, because this is part of your "expression". Just having links on a page is dull, boring, and doesn't really show a lot of expression. I've hung out for hours at plain text web pages that have no pictures, no flashy, animated graphics, but plenty of content, but I usually leave a home page mucho quicko when all I see are "Bob's Amazing Links".

Tip Number 3 - Steal that Code
Ever visit a page, and really, really like the look of it? Well then, do what over 90% of all home page authors have done at one time or another - steal that code!

This is not immoral, as long as you follow a few rules. First and foremost, you're "borrowing" the coded design of a page, not the content. Stealing content, especially without permission from the author, constitutes intellectual fraud and theft. Borrowing the code structure from a page, on the other hand, is a general practice on the net, and while some may get upset from this, it is often the best way to learn. How do you do it? Well, with Netscape, you select the menu View and pick View Source. All the raw code will pop up in a window, so you place your cursor at the top of the page, hit ctrl-a to select all, then ctrl-c to copy it all (all these instructions are for PCs). Then you open notepad or another text editor, and press ctrl-v to paste the code. Save it using .htm as your extension, and there you go!

I must stress that you should never ever steal someone's content. That's the things between the html tags. When using someone else's code, you should always try to get the original coder's permission first. Even if you don't, you should always give credit where credit is due on your own home page (a little quip, saying "I borrowed this code from a page located here should suffice). If you modify the code extensively, then you can skip these last two steps, but it's always nice to thank the original coder in some manner (even if it's through private e-mail).

Tip Number 4 - Read and Learn
This tip is similar to Tip 3, but with a difference. Instead of borrowing someone else's code, you can just view the source of various pages, and learn how certain techniques are done, such as how tables are built, how fonts are set out, and the like.

This helped me to learn HTML, which by the way isn't a very complicated thing once you get the basics down. Just remember that almost every tag has a closing tag. For instance, the <P> paragraph tag must be closed with a </P>sometime, or you will have one enormously long paragraph. When you set a font at a large site, with the The <FONT SIZE= "5"> tag, eventually you have to close it with a </FONT> or your entire page will feature a huge font. So view the source of the pages you like best, and you'll learn a lot of the basics of HTML, as well as some very advanced techniques.

Tip Number 5 - Graphics
Every page could use a graphic or two. The trick is to not overdo it. A good rule of thumb is keep your entire page, text, graphics, everything, to under 50K in byte size. And don't use dozens and dozens of images, when one or two will do.

Creating graphics for your web site is often the best thing to do (and it gives you some satisfaction - see tip number 6 for more info), but borrowing someone else's graphic from another page is fine, as long as you seek the person's permission first. The key is tact, and originality. Don't put 15 of your favourite .gif animations on your home page, simply because you think they are cool. Pick the best of the bunch, and use them, and if you want more, then rotate your selection every week or so. This makes your pages seem fresh to returning visitors, and you get to showcase images you like, but you're not overwhelming your visitors.

Intermediate Tips

PSP imports dozens of graphic image formats, so you can grab that piece of Clip art from your Word disc that you like so much, and save it in a gif format. In version 4, PSP added the ability to do anti-aliased text (anti-aliasing makes your images and text look smoother on the screen), so you can put up interesting text effects on your page. For this site, all the text effects were done exclusively in PSP. Look for some techniques used ot create images and text effects in my Tricks section.

JASC, the publisher of PSP, recently released a book called Creating Graphics with Paint Shop Pro. I briefly flipped through it at the bookstore recently, and it is a very good resource book to have if you want to create graphics.

Tip Number 7 - KISS
Keep it Simple, Stupid! No, it's not an insult. It drives home the point that some of the best pages are the simplest ones. Check this one out, for example.

Zannah's pages are coded to HTML 2.0 specs, meaning that just about any browser in the world will view her pages as she has meant them to be viewed (though she's been using the font face tag lately!). Her design is simple, elegant, and often copied - because it works. You don't need frames to jazz up a page. Frames have their use, but they make it very difficult to code pages that work in all browsers. Remember, just because your framed page looks good on your monitor, at the resolution you code in, it might look like crap in someone else's browser. If you must use frames, use only two, a left, top or bottom navigation frame, and a main content frame. Make sure people won't have to scroll left to right to see everything. Ensure your frame compliments your page, instead of destroying it. And always include information in the <NOFRAMES> </NOFRAMES> code on the frame-setting page, so that people using browsers that don't support frames can still see things. Better yet, stay away from frames altogether. Out of the hundreds and hundreds of framed pages I've seen, only a dozen or so actually looked good.

Tip Number 8 - Tables
You can probably tell, from looking at my web pages, that I'm a big fan of the table tags. I use tables everywhere, but I try to be as careful as I can when using them. I make sure that most browsers can see the content, and I make sure that my tables will not require left to right scrolls to view all the content.

There are two ways to do this. The first way is to set a fixed width for your table, by using the following table tag: <TABLE WIDTH ="595">. Why 595? Isn't the smallest PC and Mac screen size 640x480? Yes it is, but things like scroll bars, borders, and other things make the screen real estate smaller than that. Add things like variable scroll bar widths and the start bar (in Win95), and it's often hard to set up a fixed width table that will work in most browsers. I have settled on the 595 pixel width size, since it works on every screen and every resolution I've tried.

The second way to do this is to set the table width to a percentage, like this: <TABLE WIDTH ="95%">. This tag forces the table to fill the browser window, left to right, to 95% of the width. So if the person is viewing the page on a 640x480 screen, the table width will be approximately 580 pixels wide. On a 1024x768 resolution screen, it would be about 950 pixels wide. You can see this tag in use here - try making the browser window smaller and larger. Then come back!

There are problems with the second approach. Various bugs in Netscape and MSIE mean that sometimes your fixed-width table cells inside the table (set to a pixel size vs. a percentage size) don't stay in the fixed pixel size - you can see this happen with the left margin of the main body text in the example above. Also, you don't have as much control over the look of your layout when you use a relative table width. In the end, the choice is yours... I use the fixed width, which means I don't take advantage of the real estate on larger screens, but I have more control over my layout.

Tip Number 9 - Be Wary of Certain Tags
I worry about people who use the <MARQUEE> tag. I worry about people who use the <MULTICOL> tag. I worry about people who use single-browser specific tags all the time. They simply aren't reaching the viewers they should be.

Don't get me wrong. I use browser specific tags all the time. I just make sure they are supported equally by the two big browsers, Netscape and MS Internet Explorer, and I also make sure my pages degrade a bit so users of older browsers, or fringe browsers can still see my pages. I use tags like <FONT FACE> all the time, to set up a different font look for a page. But I'm careful. I don't use obscure fonts like <FONT FACE = "Tribecca"> because I know most people don't have it. In fact, the only two fonts you can be assured most people have are a serif font (like Times New Roman, Times, Roman, Serif), and a sans serif font (like Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, Sans). So when I set up a page to display a font other than the browser default, I supply several names. That way the browser will run through the list until it recognizes one of them. The tag setting the fonts for this page looks like this: <FONT FACE = "Arial,Swiss,Geneva,Helvetica,Sans">. For anyone using Netscape or MSIE, version 3 and above, they will see this page in the font I chose. Others with older browsers will still see the text, because if they don't support the <FONT FACE> tag, they will ignore it, and show the content in the browser's default font.

Tip Number 10 - Bust Loose
This tip kind of goes back to tip one - just do it, bay-bee! After all is said and done, it's your page, your web site, and you can do whatever you darn well please!

If you want a marquee, use it. If you want frames galore, do it. If you want 500 pictures on your site, go for it. I might not stay long, but hey, it's your freedom of expression we are dealing with, not mine. If you want a page filled with 300 links, go for it. Get you page up on the web today, and be damned the critics. It's your page, your vision, your choice. Then, if you want to learn, if you think you need to improve, there are literally thousands of sources on the net that can help you out. This is just one of them. Many more can be found at the Web Design Resource Center, or at NerdWorld.