Putting Text Documents on the Web

Using your word-processing software to create Web pages.

Uploading these documents to the Web

Using your word-processing software to create Web pages:

1. After you have this software, you can open your word-processing program as usual, type in some stuff, and then choose "Save As" and choose the HTML option. This makes it a page that you can put on the Web. It's name will then end in .htm or .html. It will be better if you use relatively short file names - six letters or so - and no spaces in the file names.
2. At this point, you'll be tempted to mess with the spacing and page breaks in your document to make it look good. DON'T! It won't work very well and you'll waste a lot of time. Go on and learn about links and stuff and practice that.
3. But, you didn't just want your regular text - no doubt you want to be able to do links. That's the heart of the Web. So, save that main file, and then create another HTML file and give it a name, say second.htm Now, go back to the main file. Explore your menus and icons and find the one that says "Create Link" or something like it. In Microsoft Word, the icon is a little chain link. When you have found that, then choose a word or phrase, select it, then click on the menu item or icon to create a link. That should open up a window that gives lots of options. Basically, you can link it to one of three things: another Web address, another local file, or a bookmark in the current file.
4. To link to another Web address, just type that Web address into the obvious box. It will almost always start with http. So, if you wanted to link to Microsoft, you'd type http://www.microsoft.com/ To link to a local file, you choose "Browse" or something like that, and it will allow you to search your current directory or wherever on your computer and choose a file. Choose the file you just created second.htm Then look carefully at what it put in the box. You don't want the entire path name on your hard drive - you just want the local file name. Then you want to put these two files in the same subdirectory when you put them on the Web.
5. A new idea - bookmarks (also called anchors). Web files are usually fairly short. But there may be times when you need to put in a long file - like this one. It is a good idea then to separate it into sections, put in bookmarks, and put a "table of contents" at the beginning with links to the various sections. I did that in this document. Before you can link to bookmarks, you must create them. You need a menu item or icon to do this. Explore and find it. In Microsoft Word, the icon is a book, and is close to the link icon. When you have found it, then, in your document, put your cursor where you want a bookmark (at the beginning of a section) and click on the menu item or icon for a Bookmark, and then give it a name. Do this for all the bookmarks you want in the document. After you have created the bookmarks, then make your table of contents at the beginning of the document, select one item in that table of contents, click on the link icon or menu item for links, and choose the Bookmark option in that window. That should bring up a list of all the bookmarks you have created here, so you can choose which you want for that item in the table of contents.
6. You have a very limited set of fonts and sizes available to you in HTML, compared to what you have in your word-processor. You have a Normal style, several Headings styles in various sizes, a couple of List styles, and some others. Explore that menu. In general, spacing and page breaks are not as flexible as you are used to. Indenting paragraphs is not generally supported, for instance. Centering a line may or may not be available in your package. (It wasn't for Word 6.0, and is for Word 7.0, I believe.)
7. Look at this file to see a few things I've learned about the content part of writing Web pages (as opposed to the software part).

Uploading these documents to the Web

I think it is a good idea to keep a "mirror" copy of your entire set of Web documents in a directory on your hard drive. I keep all of my Web pages in a separate directory on my hard drive. This does not include the documents they came from, and I keep exactly the same subdirectory structure within it that I intend to have on the Web. I also do all of my editing of Web documents here. This helps me to easily keep track of things what I have done and makes it easy to check my links.

Assuming that you have obtained your Web directory and the software needed to upload documents, and that you have learned to use that software, then you're all set. Just go to the directory on your hard drive where you stored your Web pages and upload the entire contents of that directory. Then, if it wasn't already named this way, name your top page index.htm . If there is another file named index.html (already in the directory) you will need to delete it.

After you have uploaded it, then get on the Web and look at it!!