Welcome to the idiots guide to the web

These pages are designed to help you set-up a system for designing your own web pages and testing them on your personal web server, before sending them off into the ether to be viewed by all and sundry. All of this advice is from experience.. that doesn't mean to say its correct!

Some Basics

Short and to the point, there are people out there who don't like Microsoft ruling the computer world. Just to humour these people (whoever they are), most of the tools mentioned here are Microsoft free. I even have a logo..

What is a Web Site?

A web site is a collection of files. These files can be html documents, pictures, text files or really anything else. What you generally see in a web browser is an html document. These are files usually with the extension .html or .htm, it doesn't matter which. A typical web site will have a home page: an html file containing links or hyperlinks to the rest of the files. This is what its all about.. so read on.

Where is a web site?

The web site can be wherever you want it.. under the kitchen sink, as long as no one wants to see it. In order to make it visible it must be sitting somewhere where everyone can see it.. on top of a mountain or on a web server would be better! To get your site onto a server you need to develop it. Typically you would have a copy of the web on your local computer and then publish it to the server.

How do you view a web site?

Normally you see web sites through a browser.. probably how you are reading this, and probably with a browser called Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator. AOL and others do exist too. Without getting too involved, to get visible on the web you will need a domain name eg www.blob.com. This name is linked through a very large table to an IP address.. an address of a physical server (a dedicated computer). When you enter in your browser a page from www.blob.com the IP address will be looked up (through a DNS table) and you'll be connected to the server containing the domain pages..but only if the domain is registered.. more later.

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