<p>The High-Tech Toastmaster</p>

3. Help! I Don't Know Anything About Designing a Web Site!

1. At its heart, a web site is just a folder on somebody else's computer (the web server) where you can copy files to share on the Web.
2. File transfer (FTP) programs can be free and easy to use.
3. If you can't do anything else, type up your information as a plain text file and put it on your web site.
4. You can create your web pages in your word processor and save them as HTML/web pages.
5. You can also open existing web pages in your word processor.
6. Graphic files will be saved in a separate directory such as mypage_files. Make sure you upload that directory too.
7. Microsoft offers a plug-in for Microsoft Office that lets you save documents in a more compact HTML form (closer to correct web coding).
8. HTML Tidy is a standard program that cleans up and pares down web pages, even ones generated by Microsoft products. I like Tidy UI for Windows.
9. If you need fancy scripts and programming, you can download them.
10. Compatibility: bells and whistles won't work on every computer.
11. Simplicity communicates well.
12. Learn from other web sites. View - Source.
13. The professionals can't remember all the formatting tags either. They look them up from sites such as the Barebones Guide or the Web Design Group
14. Quality web design software can fill in codes for you, such as 1st Page 2000, AceHTML and Arachnophilia.
15. I usually use Microsoft Wordpad or Notepad, but try to avoid Microsoft FrontPage, which locks you into using it and doesn't produce standard HTML.