Where to start....two important sites are Stroud's and Tucows. At these two sites you can find a web editor. This is another great site for 32 bit machines. At all these sites are many other programs useful in making a page. You will also need search engines. I prefer metasearches....check these out, you won't be sorry.
Use search engines to find instructions on hypertext markup language (html), to find text information to put on your page, to find pictures and graphics, music, background colors, etc. You can find ANYTHING on the web and it usually is free or at very little expense. It is up to you what you want to put on your page. Another important item in making a page is to see how someone makes one. On Netscape you go to View, then to Document Source. This will show you how someone made their page. To copy something, highlight what you want to copy, then use Control+C. To see what you copied (to paste) use Control+V.
You are supposed to put your ideas down on paper before you make a webpage and then, with the help of a web editor, you create the page (html). I must tell you, I did not do this. I was not sure what was going to be on my page and I started surfing the internet looking for ideas. I looked at a lot of pages...saw how they were made; the color and character, the content. Then I started putting bits and pieces on a page.
I did find that I love animations and graphics. Here is one of hundreds? thousands? of animation pages on the web. Using a search engine you can find sites too.
I had the good fortune to be able to use a scanner when I started my pages, so I scanned most of the flower pictures myself. I learned not only how to scan, but about the different picture formats commonly used on the web (.gif, .jpg, etc.) and about high and low resolution (you can take a picture that is 38,000 bytes and by changing the resolution you can have the same quality picture but at say 12,000 bytes). One good viewer program is LView which can be found at either Stroud's or Tucows. This program will compress your picture files.
If you want to download a graphic or animation, position the mouse pointer over what you want to download and click the opposite mouse button. This will bring up a screen that is self-explanatory.
When I first initially made this page I used Hotdog as my web editor. Now I am using Homesite. They are both strictly html web editors. If you do not want to learn html you can use a program such as Microsoft Front Page.
After making my page I found out my internet service provider (isp) charged $5 a month per meg for a webpage. I could not afford this for a fun page. I started to investigate and found there are places on the web where you can place your page for free. One is Geocities...so I went to Geocities and found I could place 11 megs there free. Geocities is the best place....there are people who will help you if you need it, but most information is easy to use. At Geocities I got a free address on the web, guestbook, page counter and e-mail address. Their file manager is easy to use too. I uploaded all my files without difficulty. I want to thank Geocities for making this page possible.
Once you have your webpage up and on-line you need to "get the word out". This is one area I have been a bit lax in. One of the more well known places to submit a page is Submit-It. Submit-It will place your webpage on search engines so people can find you.
There is much I do not know about making a webpage, but I am learning all the time and I like that. I also know enough now that I can appreciate the pages I see on the web. This page has given me great personal pleasure and satisfaction. Hopefully I have taken some of the MYSTERY out of webpages. It is NOT that difficult, but a matter of LEARNING. (Gosh and here you probably thought I was a genius all this time.) Good luck in your endeavors.....
If you have any information to add to this page, please e-mail me--all comments are welcome.