Building a Web Site - Add Content

The content of web pages is mostly text and graphics. With a little work you can add video clips to a web page, but you will need to know how to shoot, edit, and save the video in an appropriate format for web viewing. Here, I will concentrate on adding text and graphics. If you want to know how to add video, contact the instructor.

Adding Text

Adding text to a web page is "easy" unless it isn't. Mostly you can enter text exactly like you would in a word processor. Here are some of the differences. If you try to type a string of spaces, it may not work. Some web editors allow one space between words and ignores the rest. When you hit the ENTER key, in some web editors it simply sends the cursor to the next line, in others, it skips an extra space. The Tab key may not work. You may have a limited selection of fonts and sizes. This is because you can't be certain what fonts are on the computers of the people viewing your site.

Adding Graphics

Adding graphics to web pages is basically the same for all the web editors. First, click where you want the picture to be in the web page. Then, use the Insert Menu and choose "Picture" or "Image". Find the picture and then click on it. It will show up where you previously clicked.

What could go wrong? The picture may not be the size you like. It may be much smaller than you expected or so large it fills the whole screen (and then some). Sizing the pictures is something you should do, BEFORE adding the pictures to the web page. We will be discussing sizing graphics on Weeks 7 and 8.

The steps:

• plan the web site
• create a folder to hold the web site and all its graphics
• create a generic page
• save the generic page as each page you plan on creating
• add content to the pages
• add links between the pages