How to Quickly Publish a Web Page
What’s a Web?
The “web” is the term for the near-instantaneous access to a collection of information electronically stored in computers (called servers) scattered throughout the world.
The ability to quickly store and retrieve information electronically with relative ease in a timely manner is acknowledged as part and parcel of twenty first century life. The web augments and, in many cases, replaces the dominance of printed matter. Dissemination of information by the web is rapidly becoming the norm.
A “web page” is analogous to a printed page and a “web site” to a book or catalog. “Web publishing” is the act of making the pages accessible on the web.
A major part of the power of the web is the “link” function. Whereas in printed matter, the use of footnotes provide the “link” to additional relevant material, on a web page, a word, phrase or image is sensitized such that clicking on it automatically accesses the relevant data. This ability to immediately reference supporting data at any time is a breakthrough in rapid information retrieval.
How can I use the web to help me?
If you need to disseminate information quickly and to a large audience with the ability to revise the information at any time, then publishing on the web is a viable option.
Some examples are schedules, notices, reference material, resource lists, work assignments, etc.
How do I publish on the web?
To publish, you require several things:
A program on a computer to create and format the content
A place to store the content (called a “web host” or “server”)
An internet connection to move the content from the computer to the host
So, let’s get started
Prerequisites:
You are familiar with using a computer
You know how to use a word processor to create documents
You have access to a computer connected to the web
You are familiar with basic web browsing techniques including URL addresses and bookmarking
You need a web host to store your web pages. Some options are:
Your Internet Services Provider (ISP) such as Hawaiian Telcomm DSL or Oceanic Cable Road Runner Service provides you with “free” space, typically 5-15 megabytes, as part of your contracted monthly service.
Your organization, DOE, etc. provides you with “free” space.
You rent space on a commercial web hosting service
You sign up for free web space with one of many providers, such as Geocities, Angelfire, Tripod, Google, etc. and are willing to accept the mandatory advertising pop-ups and/or inclusions.
You need to create your content into web-acceptable format. Some options are:
Acquire a program for your computer to format your content and then move it to the host.
Use a web-based program provided by your chosen web host to format your content.
Finally, you need to disseminate the URL address to your audience
The URL address is the location indicator of where you stored your pages.
For the trivia oriented individual, URL is the acronym for Universal Resource Locator, an industry standardized indicator that identifies the Internet location of the host computer.
A quick and simple web site using Google Page Creator
Google Page Creator is a free web host combined with a web-page authoring tool. It is a basic tool with some limitations, but perfectly usable for beginning web sites.
In order to use Google Pages (as it is commonly called), you MUST have a Google Gmail account. You can request a free account as follows:
Go to http://pages.google.com
Click on “No Gmail Account? Sign Up”
Follow the three steps
Write down your new Gmail account user name and password
The Exercise
Create a web site with two web pages
The first page, commonly known as the Home page, contains a short introduction and description of the site. It also contains a series of links to other pages of the site, the equivalent of the “Table of Contents” in a book.
The second page contains a body of text. One or more links to additional material outside of the page may be embedded in or follow the text. A link back to the Home page sits at the bottom of the page.
The Home page
Log into http://pages.google.com with your Gmail account user name and password
Click on Create New Page
Type in a title for the page in Your Page’s Title space, and then click Create and Edit. This will be the heading for your page. For example: The Little Red Schoolhouse
Click on Change Look and select your desired page style
Click on Change Layout and select your desired page layout. For the Home page, the second one from the left with the narrow column on the left side is recommended as it provides space for links to other pages.
Type in the optional sub-title if desired
Type or cut-and-paste your page introduction and description your page’s main content area.
Click Preview to check your work
The second page
Click the Back Arrow to return to the Page Manager
Click on Create New Page
Type in a title for the page in Your Page’s Title space, and then click Create and Edit. This will be the heading for your page. For example: Web Page Creation
Click on Change Look and select your desired page style
Click on Change Layout and select your desired page layout. For this page, the leftmost layout is most useful.
Type in the optional sub-title if desired
Type or cut-and-paste your text content into your page’s main content area.
At the bottom of the page, type home, highlight it and click on the Link button on the left. Click on Link to Your Pages and select the home page name (The Little Red Schoolhouse), then click OK. This creates the link back to the home page. When you click on the word “Home” it will link to and display the home page.
Click Preview to check your work
Click Publish to make the page web-accessible
Modify the Home page
Click on Back to Page Manager
Click on The Little Red Schoolhouse
On the left-hand column, type Web Page Creation, highlight it and click on the Link Button on the left. Click on Link to Your Pages and select the Web Page Creation page name, then click OK. This creates the link to the second page. When you click on the word ” Web Page Creation ” it will link to and display that page.
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Add the following sentence below the newly created link.” For more information, see the Hawaii Biodiversity website”.
Select and highlight the words “Hawaii Biodiversity”.
Click on the Link Button on the left.
Click on Link to Web Address
Enter the following in the box below “To what URL should this link go to?”: http://www.hinhp.org/
Click on the Link Button on the left.
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Click Preview to check your work
Click Publish to make the page web-accessible
Pau
You have successfully created a website with a home page and a link to a second page. The second page has a link to return you to the home page.
You have also created a link to an outside source of information on Hawaii Biodiversity.
To test this, type “your-gmail-name.googlepages.com” into the Address line and press Enter. You should see your home page. Click on the link on the left for your second page. This should now display your second page. Click on the Home link at the bottom of the page and it will return you to your Home page.
Links to the outside world
You can return to Google pages at any time to add, delete and change pages and content. For example, you could edit the second page to add additional links. Just type in a word/title, highlight it and click on the Link button. Select Web Address and type or paste in the URL and click the Ok button.
Adding images onto the page
To insert an image or graphic onto a page, click on the “images” button on the left to get the “Add an image” page. Click on the “Browse” button and select an image file from your computer. Once the image appears, highlight it, then click the “Add Image” button. You can then click and drag the image wherever you want. You can also select the size of the image (Small, Medium, Large, Original Size).
