Me own home page - Web page development - Build Your Web Site - Internet/Web/Online Service Information

Home Office Computing, June, 1997 by Nick Sullivan

I Finally Created a Web Site Now What Do I Put There?

The editors of this magazine asked if I would contribute to their special Web issue by attempting to publish my own home page. Their reasoning? If Nick can do it, anybody can. In fact, I did it, and pretty quickly too, using ordinary office tools such as a word processor and a modem. To accomplish this feat, I didn't even have to attend night school, although you could say I engaged in some learn-as-you-go instruction by roaming around a few Web sites. In all, I'd have to agree: If I can do it, you can too.

I'm a text-oriented person, so I started my mini-Odyssey using the Web authoring tools in Microsoft Word (Office 97 edition). You choose a template, which gives you a spot for a headline, a graphic, and some text boxes preceded by bullets. You can customize the page 101 different ways, add hypertext links to other pages (files), and save it as an HTML file. No programming required.

But in the middle of this process, I realized that I didn't have a spot on a server for my page to reside. So I did an about-face and headed to the U.S. Robotics Web site (www.usr.com), which allows customers (I'm a new owner of a Sportster 56K fax/modem) to create and post their pages for free in a place called TowneSquare 2000.

Alas, this was a fool's errand, as the site's online documentation is paltry. So I changed direction again and turned to my Internet service provider, Sprynet, for help. You can create and punish pages on this ISP, and you get up to 5MB of server space free with a $19.95 unlimited-use account. Plus you can download The Home Page Wizard (www.sprynet. com; Win; free) and create your masterpiece offline.

The Home Page Wizard is a nice piece of freeware, but it's no Microsoft Word. After a few stabs at it, I checked the README file, which indicated I could use any authoring tool and then use Sprynet's Publishing Wizard to post my pages. So I crawled back to Microsoft Word and started having some fun.

Before you could say "hot summer day," I was wrapping text around a picture of myself and installing scrolling textbars with my name in them. I added hot-pink backgrounds and turquoise text, hotlinked this to that and that to this and generally indulged myself. I suffered a few crashes, and when I tested some files as real Web pages, the graphics didn't translate, but the text was readable.

Then I prepared to publish my pages. I collected all the HTML and graphics files, answered all the questions, typed in my password, and launched. I got an error message: "Unable to make socket connection to publishing server." After several more attempts, I searched the Sprynet Help files for information but found no solace. So I went to bed.

The next day I tried again and the files went through (without the scrolling textbars). My new Web site is a bit thin in substance, mainly a collection of some of my favorite columns, and one of the hotlinks connects to a blank page. But now that it's up and running and I know the ropes, I can beef it up and fine-tune it, anytime. Substance, of course, was never at the heart of this experiment--mechanics were. I'm here to tell you that if you can start a lawnmower after a winter of discontent, you too can build a Web site. It took me about eight hours of fiddling around and it cost nothing.

The real question is: What will you say and who will want to hear it?

NICK SULLIVAN'S new Web site is up and running. You can e-mail him at nicks@sprynet.com.