Web Maker
A short course in designing and bulding a web site.
Step 4: Build your page.
Putting it all together.
Make sure you know where all the elements are. Take out the sketches you made in Step 2, earlier. Then open the Claris Home Page program. When it starts up, Claris home Page will set up a new page, ready for you to work with. Building the page will be easy, because you have already assembled all the pieces.
¥ Tell Claris Home Page where to save your images
It's important that all the pieces of your Home Page end up in the folder with your last name. Each time you import an image into Claris Home Page, it creates a new image file. To make sure that Claris Home Page saves them into your folder, choose Preferences under the Edit menu. Hold the mouse down on the rectangular button, and choose "Images." Now press the "Set" button, then choose your own folder on the desktop, and click OK. This will cause all image files to be saved into your folder.
¥ Enter titles and text
Type the title for your Home Page into Claris Home Page. Press <return>. Then enter your first piece of text. If your text was saved earlier as a ClarisWorks document, find it in the Home Page folder on the desktop, and open it by double-clicking on it. Then select the text, copy it, and paste it into your Home Page.
¥ Insert pictures
Look at your sketch. Notice where the first picture appears. In Claris Home Page, put the cursor (the little blinking line) at the place where you want the picture to appear. Then use the Image... item under the Insert menu. Click on the Desktop button, then open your "Pictures for Home Page" folder, click on the picture you want, and it will appear on your Home Page. If the picture is too big, you can make it smaller by dragging its handle in the lower left corner until it becomes the size you want. When you shrink your picture, hold down the shift key, so that it will stay in its proper proportions. (But don't try to make your picture bigger &emdash; this will cause it to become blurry, or "pixilated.")
¥ Align Elements on the Page
Your titles, text, and pictures can be aligned to the left, to the right, or to the center of your Home Page. Select the item you want to align, then use the alignment buttons at the top of the Claris Home Page window to align them. To select a title or a paragraph of text, drag the mouse across it. To select a picture, click on it once.
¥ Set your titles
To make the titles appear larger, first select them by dragging over them with the mouse. Then use the Format menu to choose the size of title you want. Heading 1 is the largest size, while Heading 6 is very small. Try your title at various sizes to see what it looks like. Titles work better when they can appear on a single line all by themselves.
¥ Save your page
When your Home Page looks just like what you had sketched out in Step 2, it's time to save your work. Choose Save from the File menu. Claris Home Page will at this point ask you to type in a title for your page. The title is what appears in Netscape's Title Bar when people look at your page. Keep this title short, such as "East River Chess Club." Next, Claris Home Page will ask you for a filename for this page. Use a single-word filename such as homepage.html. No spaces or special characters should appear in this filename. Make sure you save the files into your folder on the Desktop.
¥ Build a second page
Repeat the process you just went through to create the second page of your web site. Look at the sketch you made, make a new page with Claris Home Page, insert the elements, and save the second page. Give this a different title and filename from your first page. Use a title that say what is on the page, such as "Chess Club Calendar." Don't use titles such as "Home Page #2" or "My Second Page." Filenames must be in the form chess.html, and must be saved into your folder.
¥ Create links between pages
Go back to your first page. There should be something on the first page that refers to the second page, such as text: "...also includes the Chess Club calendar..."; or a picture of a miniature calendar.
Select the text (or the picture) that will become the link to the second page. Then choose Link to File... from the Insert menu. Choose your second page from the window. Press <return> on the keyboard and Voila! The text (or picture) has turned blue, and is set to link to the second page. Whenever someone clicks on this blue spot, they will be sent to your second page.
Make sure to save your page again, so that these links are preserved.
¥ Build and link more pages
For a large web site, with lots of information, it's a good idea to make many pages, each covering a different topic. You can then use hypertext links to make connections between the pages, as described above. Make sure you save all these pages into the same folder on your hard disk.
For further instructions on using Claris Home Page, read the How-to section.
You have just created your Home Page. Congratulations! But you're not done yet. You need to test your page, to make sure it works the way you want.
Copyright © by James G. Lengel 1997.