Setup Your PC Ready To Build Your Website

INFO: Folders (In Mac/Windows) are called directories in Unix. The terms are interchangeable.

• Create 'website or 'publishing' directory for your website on your PC.
  
  Choose a folder, for example: in your My Documents/ folder, create a new folder with the same name as your domain name. i.e. mydomain.com/.
  
  Think of this as your 'website' or 'publishing directory' - it will be an exact mirror of what's on your webhost's disk! When you come to upload (publish) your website, you'll need to specify this one directory, and Arachnophilia (or your FTP program) can upload everything from there (including subdirectories).
  
  If you want to store different elements of your website in different directories, that's up to you. You could, for example, store all your graphics in a directory called 'img', or all your free stuff in a 'freestuff' directory. If you're not sure, then just put everything in the one place for now.
  
  
• Create a Payment Processing directory.
  
  Within your website directory, create a directory 'pp'. You'll put the automatic payment processing script in here. When the script runs, it'll write its log file here (on the server).
  
  
• Create a Work directory.
  
  Create a directory called 'Work', or similar in your 'My Documents' folder, not in your website directory. You'll do all your work, have draft versions of things, raw data, old images etc here. (You'll need some sub-directories off this to keep things tidy!)
  
  

Copy the example HTML files into an examples/ sub-directory off your work folder...

The example HTML web pages are well commented to explain the HTML tags and concepts they use. You can use the files in any way you wish, read, or even modify them and use them in your own site. The pages available are:

Filename	Description
index4.html	HTML V4 page - this page contains lots of examples of using styles. You can use it as a template, but it's mainly intended to be read, then cut and pasted from.
The following pages are HTML 3.2... I wouldn't recommend using them as templates, but they may be worth a look...
index.html	Index or Home page - this is the first page visitors will see. It should contain an overview of what your website's about.
contact.html	A page with your contact details on - email addresses, phone and address if applicable.
free.html	Any free stuff you may have for customers to view / download etc.
info.html	Legal Info, Disclaimers, Terms and Conditions etc.
catalog.html	A catalogue of all your products.
treas.html	Treasure Island - The Book (for fun!)

Copy the example index.php or your chosen template into your website directory. If you want to create a new file - do so.

I think you should just use my examples as part of the HTML tutorial rather than as templates - there are way better sources of templates online... For a list of template resources, see the HTML page. See the page on website design for even more ideas on getting inspiration or templates.

If you decide to use my examples, copy the index.htm and index-4.htm file from the Work/Examples directory to your Website directory.

index.htm is HTML 3.2 compliant.

index-4.html is HTML 4 compliant, and has a lot of examples of setting style info using an embedded style sheet.

The first web page you'll create is your 'Home Page'. This is also going to be your layout template.

The Home Page is given one of a few specific names - like index.html or default.html - this ensures that if a browser only has the name of the directory (e.g. www.yahoo.com/mywebsite), the webserver software will be able to find a default page to serve up.

You may need to check with your webhost because the webserver software can be configured to look for any filename as a default page. Common prefixes are: index, main, default. Common suffixes are .html .htm .php etc... If you use the filename index.html or index.php then that should work fine.

Collect together all of the material that you want on your website:

• Info for your 'Home page' - who you are, what you're selling etc...
• Individual product data-sheets, sales copy, price lists
• The images you want to use - company logo, photos of your products, sales team, cat, etc...

Copy these files to your Work directory, possibly into sub-directories.

If you don't yet have any of this material - you should probably skip this and just create your content as you go along.

You should move the logo you created during the last lesson in to the website directory, and any work files into an appropriate sub-directory of 'Work' - like 'My Documents/Work/Logo1-Work'.

As you collect or create any images you need for your site, you should work on them in the 'Work' directory and only move them to the web directory when they're finished.