Some Advice

Okay, so you finally got that what seems to be an all important internet connection. Now your wondering, what else can I do besides email and surfing the net. Make a home on the web for yourself! Yes, that's right! Jump out there and grab yourself a spot. After all, why not do it, everyone else is right?

One thing that should be done in order to accomplish getting a spot is to know a little about where or what you are getting into. The internet is just a bunch of computers that are hooked together in what are called networks. There are a lot of different types of little networks out there, and those are in turn connected to form the larger internet community. This is an oversimplification of what it actually is, but if you are interested in knowing a little more, you can read a little about networks and get a better understanding of how they work.

The only things you really need in order to have a homepage on the internet are an internet account and the desire to create something for all the people in the world to see. If you're a student, your institution should provide you with such an account as part of your tuition fees. Did you ever wonder why there are a lot of college students on the net? That's why, they receive accounts just for being students!

Alright, so what do you do if you're not a student eh? Just find a local internet provider and sign up. The standard package is lower than a cable bill and sometimes lower than a phone bill, so it is affordable for just about anyone. It should include an email address and some disk space for you on their system. The amount of space they provide on their system depends on how much you are paying for the account, some will only provide 1 megabyte, and yet, some provide unlimited space.

At this point you're probably saying to yourself, yea I know this already. I have my internet connection, an email account, and a desire to make a HP. What next!? Well, the next step is to decide where you want to put your homepage. You can put it just about anywhere you want, on your providers system, or you can find your own home. There are several servers out there that will give you a place to put your homepage for free. Some of the more popular ones are Geocities and Angelfire.

Now, most people would say that the next step is to sit and write down what you want to put on your page and get it all done on paper before you post the final product. I don't agree with that at all. There are tons of people out there that have done just that and end up not posting their pages for months or not at all! The best way to get one started and posted right away is to use the homepage editors that the free places provide. If you don't know how to write HTML, that could pose a problem. To solve that first painful page writing task, there are places in and around the net that provide a homepage generator. All you have to do is go there and fill out some simple forms and bam! They email you your finished page! After that, you just need to FTP it to the place your going to put your homepage and you're done! Now don't let that acronym scare you! It just stands for File Transfer Protocol. It is just a program that you can use to move files and such from your system at home to your provider's system. If you want to know more about it, then read this FAQ.

Okay, now let's do a preflight check here. You have an internet account, an email address, a place to put your page, the FTP program, and a beginning page posted. Now all that is left is to write the page itself. You can go about this several ways. You can either find a HTML editor that you like, or you can write that page by hand. The nice thing about the editors is that you don't have to know anything about HTML to make a page. They are designed to do all of that work for you. Hence, they are very popular and there are many of them. One of the best places to find one is to go to the Web Designer, they have one of the most comprehensive lists of editors available on the net I have seen.

What did you say? You say you want to do this all by hand?*L* Way to go! To me, that is the only way to actually really learn HTML and get the most enjoyment from writing a homepage. You wrote it, not some silly program. Any word processor can be used to write HTML. It is done just like you would write a letter to someone. Only this document will have HTML tags in it. Don't worry, I'll explain TAGS in another section. The only thing that has to be done is the file has to be saved as a .txt file and with the extension .htm. I know that might have sounded confusing, but when you want to save your file, choose save as and then choose .txt from the choices of file types. Then just type in the name you want to call the file with the extension .htm.

No matter which way you choose to write the page, the most important thing to remember is to make the page an extension of you! Don't just make it a page filled with links to other places! There are way too many of those pages that are just lists of links. A homepage should have part of the person in it. Try to include what you like to do, why your making a page, what some of your favorite things are, and what your favorite color is. Corny stuff like that about people is what makes homepages so interesting! With the exception of twins and such, there are no two people on this planet exactly alike, and even twins differ in certain aspects. So why should homepages appear alike? Originality and substance are the flavor of a homepage. Have something to say. Express your beliefs! A homepage makes the best soapbox in the world. Once a homepage is posted and listed with a few search engines, there is the possibility that ANYONE in the world on the internet could drop by. So by all means have something for them to digest when they get there. Personally, I would much rather visit a page that is funny, different, and contains something about the person who wrote it then to visit one just filled with Java goodies and animated gifs!

I don't want to sound ethnocentric, but I am an American, so I will speak from what I know. As Americans we are provided with the right of free speech, and the internet is the best place yet invented to express that speech. We all have different opinions, religions, beliefs, backgrounds, cultures, and ideas. That is what makes America and the world such an interesting place. If everyone was the same then we would all die a short death from boredom. So get out there! Carve yourself a little nitch in the cyberspace world of the internet, but make it one that is about something. Try to make an expression of yourself appear on that page. It's okay to have a bland page. Some people are just not creative at heart, but please, don't make it boring. Have fun making that page and remember, we as fellow homepage surfers want CONTENT!*smile*

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