Creating Web Pages

Create and post your very own Web site on the Internet in this extensive, hands-on, six week workshop. First, you'll learn about the capabilities of the World Wide Web and the fundamentals of web design. Then, with your instructor's patient guidance, you'll plan the content, structure and layout of your Web site, create pages full of neatly formatted text, build links between the pages and to the outside world, and add color, backgrounds, graphics, tables, hot buttons, and animation. You'll also learn critical and timely information on securing the best possible location in search engine listings, and powerful no-cost or low-cost web marketing strategies.

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Syllabus:

A new section of each course starts monthly. If enrolling in a series of two or more courses, please be sure to space the start date for each course at least two months apart.
All courses run for six weeks, with a two-week grace period at the end. Two lessons are released each week for the six-week duration of the course. You do not have to be present when lessons are released. You will have access to all lessons until the course ends. However, the interactive discussion area that accompanies each lesson will automatically close two weeks after the lesson is released. As such, we strongly recommend that you complete each lesson within two weeks of its release.
The final exam will be released on the same day as the last lesson. Once the final exam has been released, you will have two weeks to complete all of your course work, including the final exam.


Week One
Wednesday - Lesson 01
In this lesson, you'll learn where the web came from and how it works. This lesson is important because you won't be able to fully exploit this new medium until you develop a complete understanding of its history and capabilities.
Friday - Lesson 02
This lesson will help you get organized. You'll learn the guiding principles of web design and how to choose the best navigational structure for your site. In this lesson, you'll learn the basics of HTML: the language of the web. You'll also get the opportunity to build and view your very first web page!
Week Two
Wednesday - Lesson 03
On this day, you'll learn how to jazz up your pages by adjusting the alignment and indentation of your text. You'll also learn how to work with different type sizes and colors.
Friday - Lesson 04
This lesson will teach you how to add a little visual excitement to your pages by mixing a few graphics with your text. You'll find out how to download images right off the Web without running afoul of copyright laws, and you'll learn about two image formats supported by the Web: GIF and JPEG. You'll learn where they came from, how they work, and when it's best to choose one image format over the other. You'll also learn how to properly tag your graphics so your site remains accessible to all users, including people who cannot see images.
Week Three
Wednesday - Lesson 05
Have you ever had to wait a long time for an image-laden Web page to assemble itself on your screen? Today, you'll learn some tricks you can use with your graphics to make your Web pages seem to load faster. You'll find out how you can pre-specify your image dimensions, essentially reserving space for large graphics before they load. You'll also discover a few ways to optimize your images for the fastest possible download time. You'll learn how to incorporate an image into the background of your Web page, and you'll find out how to add animated images to the pages you create.
Friday - Lesson 06
This is perhaps the most important of all our lessons. In most cases, the popularity of your web site will be directly related to its position in the search engine listings. Your goal as a web designer should be to engineer your site so that its pages get the best position possible on any search results page. Today, we're going to learn several strategies designed specifically to give you the best possible search engine results.
Week Four
Wednesday - Lesson 07
This lesson will teach you how to help people navigate through all the pages of your site. You'll learn how to build hypertext links and hot buttons that people can click on to glide effortlessly from one page of your site to the next. You'll also learn how to build links to your e-mailbox, pages on other sites, or to a specific paragraph on one of your own pages.
Friday - Lesson 08
This lesson will teach you all the HTML you'll need to know in order to arrange your words, links and images into orderly arrangements of columns and rows.
Week Five
Wednesday - Lesson 09
Today, you'll learn about some of the more exciting things that you can do with tables. You'll learn how to adjust the size of the columns, rows and cells that make up your tables, change the background color of each cell in a table, adjust the alignment of text inside your table, and more. By the time this lesson is over, you should be well-prepared to transform a humdrum page into something a bit more visually exciting.
Friday - Lesson 10
This lesson will begin with a brief introduction to authoring systems, which can be used to help automate the Web-building process. You will also receive my comprehensive HTML reference, a powerful guide to the language you have learned in this course. You're sure to refer to it again and again!
Week Six
Wednesday - Lesson 11
By now, you should have a fully functional web site complete with two or more pages of text, links, graphics, animation, tables, a background, and whatever else you came up with. By now, I'm sure you'll be anxious to put your labor of love on public display! This week, you'll get that opportunity. But first, you'll need to select a hosting service. When selecting a web host, I always ask nine very important questions. You'll learn what those questions are in this lesson.
Friday - Lesson 12
Our last lesson will teach you how to transport your web pages, images and other files across the Internet from your computer to the host computer. Once your site is on the web, you'll need to let people know that it exists. In this lesson, you'll learn several great Web marketing techniques which require no investment other than your own time.