Building your webspace

Step 1: Creating your personal Web page

It's assumed that you have activated your personal Webspace already. If not, please do so through the Signup Page before proceeding.
So, your Webspace is activated and you're ready to create your first Web page!

Web pages are written in a "language" called Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). HTML is used to describe to a Web browser (like Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape Communicator) how to display the content of your page.

Selecting a Web page editor

The easiest way to create a Web page is with a specialized HTML editor. Most HTML editors only require you to write the text and place images on your Web page (much like a word processor). This is a great way to create Web pages if you don't have any HTML experience.

If you are using Netscape Communicator, you can use the Netscape Composer component to create a HTML page. You can even create a HTML page in current versions of Microsoft Word by choosing the Save as Web page option from the File menu. Alternatively, there are many terrific free HTML editors available.

The most advanced approach is to use a basic text editor like Notepad (on Windows) or SimpleText (on Macintosh). This approach is more difficult as it requires an understanding of how to write HTML code, so we'll focus on the first method here. If you are interested, there are many additional resources available to learn more about HTML.

You can also use the code editor in File Manager by Login to you account.

Creating your Web page

These instructions assume that you have a suitable comfort level with using a HTML editor to make a Web page.

When you have finished designing your page using a HTML editor, save it as a text-only file with the name index.htm (all lower case letters). The word index indicates that this in your main page - the first page shown to people visiting your Webspace. The .htm file extension is necessary because it tells your visitor's Web browser to interpret the file as HTML.

Important: You must need to use a file named index.htm (or index.html or index.php) in your Webspace directory with the links to the files or images. Also, the FreeHostingGuru server is case sensitive. This means that it's best to name all of your .htm files (and any .gif or .jpg images) with lower case letters for consistency. For example, if you try and place an image on your page and refer to it as Image.GIF when it's really named image.gif your image will not load properly on your Web page.
Microsoft FrontPage and FrontPage Express are relatively popular Web page creation programs. FrontPage includes several special features (like a guestbook function) that require special FrontPage extensions to work. These extensions are not supported on the FreeHostingGuru Webspace server. So, if you use Microsoft FrontPage or FrontPage Express to create your Web page, be sure you only use the basic HTML editing capabilities.