BUILDING A SIMPLE PERSONAL WEB PAGE ON ANGELFIRE
11/03/07
GENERAL
There are several web sites on the Internet that
provide free space for building a personal web page. The one we will be using
is called ANGELFIRE (www.angelfire.com )
that is part of the Lycos web site system.
.
Some of the others are:
www.homestead.com,
www.whowhere.com, www.freewebspace.net www.fortunecity.com, www.tripod.com , or www.theglobe.com
You might want to try one of these at a later date.
But I am not sure they are still all available.
Hypertext
Markup Language (HTML)
Web pages use a special programming language called
Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). On the first web page that you will build on
Angelfire you will not have to know HTML to build your web page. You will use
the Basic Editor that allows you to "fill in the blanks". If you
choose to use the Advanced Editor method you will have to learn some HTML. It
is not really difficult.
The web site address for Angelfire is:
www.angelfire.com
USER NAMES GENERAL
Angelfire within the last few months has a new way
of handling user names
The old addressing scheme was
https://www.angelfire.com/planet/richnelson
or
www.angelfire.com/planet/richnelson
On this one it is not necessary to use the http://
in front of the address
On the old scheme the user name was last in the
address
The new addressing scheme is:
http://mybitsnbytes.angelfire.com
On this address you must use the http:// in the
front of the address
On the new scheme your user name is first in the web
address
DIRECTIONS FOR GETTING A NEW ANGELFIRE USER
NAME
Once onto www.angelfire.com
, just below the LOG IN on the right side where it says “Try Angelfire Free”,
click on Sign Up.
The next page will be “LYCOS Sign In
Information. That
registration form is in several steps
First you will be asked to select a USER NAME
Type in a user name that you would like, I suggest
you use all lower case.
(Examples of user names I have on angelfire are:
demoforsp and mybitsnbytes
Later if you want you can use MyBitsNBytes
to make it easier for the people
using it to remember it because
angelfire user names are not case sensitive)
Then click on the Check Username Availability button
If it says it is available proceed to the password
If is says that it is not available try a slightly
different one by adding a few characters that will make it different
Now type in a password in the boxes provided you
have to type it in twice
I URGE YOU TO WRITE DOWN BOTH THE USER ID AND
PASSWORD AND KEEP I
Fill out the name and address and other fields
requested.
I refuse all the Subscriptions and Services. You can
pick any of them that look interesting. They will probably come to you on your
email.
Fill in the remainder of the fields. The Enter
Confirmation Code is kind of odd but it is used to keep automatic sign ups. At
the very end click on “I Agree”.
.
After Angelfire has accepted you, you are ready to
build your web page.
You will only have to do what you did above once
for each web site. You can have more than one web site on angelfire if you
like. .
You can start building your web page now or log off
and do it later.
CREATING YOUR FIRST WEB PAGE
Right after angelfire accepts you will get the
CREATE A NEW PAGE can start creating your web page.
There are three steps to this
Step 1 Choose the editor you wish to use – choose
Basic
Step 2 Choose the Layout for your page – choose
Standard
Step 3 Choose the styleset
for your page – choose Styleset #1
After you complete this click on Submit
Now you will be put into the BASIC EDITOR STANDARD
where you will have more work to do.
LOGGING INTO ANGELFIRE
After you have obtained a web page on Angelfire and
come back at a later time here is how you log into angelfire:
Go to www.angelfire.com
When you get into the homepage you will see two fields where you can type in you login Id and password. My login id for one of my angelfire sites is demoforsp. This is the same one you used to get an angelfire account. Then you will have to put in your password that you told angelfire you were going to use.
Once you have logged in you will be presented with
the angelfire home page. On the left side of this page, click on “Web Shell”.
You are now in a position to do editing, viewing,
uploading text and graphics, etc
There
are several screens that you will have to deal with when building a web page on
angelfire. Here are three of the most used ones:
THE WEB SHELL SCREEN
THE EDITOR SCREEN
THE PREVIEW SCREEN
IMPORTANT! WHENEVER YOU LOGIN TO YOUR
ANGELFIRE WEB PAGE YOU WILL START BY CLICKING ON THE WEBSHELL
SCREEN. THAT WILL GET YOU IN YOUR WEB SHELL WHERE YOU WILL DO ALL YOUR
EDITING (CREATING)
On the WEBSHELL screen, scroll down until you see a rectangular box. In the box you will see a group of identifiers, Click on the words “index.html” found in this rectangular with several other identifiers. You may have to scroll down to find it. That will highlight index html. Then click on Edit just above the rectangular box. There are several possibilities such as: view, edit, rename, move, etc.
You are now in the “Basic Editor Standard” This is a “fill in the blanks” editor.
(Note: there are several steps in all to the filling
in the blank Basic Editor screen. You will have to do some of them to
personalize your web page but not all at the beginning)
Now click on the “Preview” button to see what the standard angelfire web page looks like. You have now transferred to your web page. Because it is a free web page, you will have to put up with the advertising at the top and sometimes at the bottom of the screen
RETURNING TO THE BASIC EDITOR
To get back to the edit screen, click the red X in the upper right corner of the preview screen
You can click on the Back button in the upper left
of your screen to get out of the BASIC EDITOR STANDARD screen, but before
you do that be sure to click on Save button on
the upper or lower part of the screen to get back to the Web Shell.
Now go into the index.html BASIC EDITOR and do more
of the basic 12 steps
Choose colors for your background and text.
Fill out the form for the rest of the web page. You
can make changes to the existing text as you please to personalize it by just
shadowing what you do not want and typing over it with your text.
The image boxes can be filled with images from the
angelfire library, or you can upload your own images. (See below).
When you have finished filling out the form click on
“Save” You can view your web page by clicking on index.html and then the “view”
button. Be sure to save before clicking on “view”
It you are satisfied with your web page or you want
to quit for a while, click on the “Save” button again
Be sure to logout of your Angelfire editor before
you shutdown. You have to be on your webshell page in
order to logout
LOGGING BACK INTO YOUR WEB
PAGE EDITOR
Start
Internet Explorer, and click on File, then click on Open. Type www.angelfire.com in the white space, and
peck the Enter key. You are now in Angelfires home
page Type in your User Name and password
When
you get to the Angelfire homepage, you will have to click on "Web
Shell" on the left column to get into your web shell
The Web Shell is where you do all your web page
creation work
When you login or after you save your web page you
will be automatically transferred to Angelfire’s WEBSHELL screen. Notice on this page that your full web
page URL is displayed.
THAT IS THE URL YOU TELL PEOPLE TO USE TO VIEW YOUR
WEB PAGE.
Also notice on the WEB SHELL page that other
information about how much space you have used, and how much is still
available.
TRANSFERRING HTML TEXT FROM WORD TO ANGELFIRE
CREATING AN EXTENSION
WEB PAGE (SUBDIRECTORY) ON YOUR PRIMARY WEB SITE
One
of the great features of Angelfire is that they allow you to create extension
web pages on your primary web site. Of course you must already have an
angelfire web site Username and password.
After you have obtained an angelfire web site, Log into your regular
angelfire Directory Name as normal. You should now be in your Web Shell
screen
To
create an extension web page on your primary web page, go down to:
“Create
a New”, and put a bullet in Create File if it is not already there, and in the
blank space, type in a new directory name. - Example:
beginner.html or mypix.html or instructions.html
The
extension name should relate to the extension content.
Be
sure you add the .html.
Then
click on “Create”
This
will put you on a screen there you can make selections for your new web page.
Select
Basic by putting a bullet in the circle by clicking in the circle. Basic is
menu-driven and easy to use for your first web page. Advanced requires a
knowledge of HTML
CHOOSE
FROM ONE OF THE FOLLOWING:
Standard
Lines
List
My
Info
Photo
Album 1
Photo
Album 2
I
suggest you select Photo Album 1
Choose
a Styleset
Select
a styleset by clicking on the bullet over one of
them. You can make changes later.
Click
on “Submit”
This
should put you in the Web Shell screen for your web page.
Look
for your new web file name (i.e. beginner.html) in the box with Index.html and
other files and directories.
Click
on the new web directory name (i.e. page2.html) to highlight it
That
will put you in the Web Shell of your new web page..
Now
click on Preview just to see what is on the formatted web page.
Now
you can click on the Back button to make the changes you want.
After
you have made changes and checked them using Preview, be sure you
click the “Save” button to save the new page. If you don’t, you will lose all
the changes including the new page.
NOTE:
You
can add as many new web pages to your primary web page as your want; up to the
limit angelfire allows you. Which is about 50 megabits.
CREATING THE HTLM TEXT
Type the text you want to use on your web site on MS Word and save it as a regular document
Then save the same text using “Save As” and save it as a web page. This is done by changing “Save As Type” to Web Page at the bottom of the Save As screen.
UPLOADING THE HTML TEXT TO ANGELFIRE
Now go into angelfire web shell and go into the Upload mode. Click on browse
Find the web page saved from Word as a web page. And click on Upload
Then click on Upload again.
You will see the new web page in the box on the web shell screen. It will be an html file.
Highlight that file and click on edit
Go in and preview and edit it if necessary. When you are done save the changes
COPYING THE HTML TEXT FROM EDITOR TO YOUR WEB PAGE
When you are still in the Editor, put the cursor at the beginning of the first line of the document.
Now hold down the Ctrl key and at the same time peck the A key. That should highlight the entire document.
Now go up to Edit on the Menu bar and click, then click on Copy. That will put a copy of the html document on your clipboard.
Now go back to editing your web page i.e. page3.html
Go down to where you put text on your web page, and put the cursor where you want to paste your document from the clipboard, and paste in the copied document. You will see that it is in html format
Since it is in html format it will show up properly on you web page.
Now go back to your index.htm and add the link to this new web page extension: i.e. page3.html.
UPLOADING
GRAPHICS
On the WEBSHELL page there is a place where you can upload graphic images.
(You can also upload text if you want to). If you upload text, it should be in HTML format. You can create HTML text on Word. (Please see the instructions above).
To upload a picture (graphics) to Angelfire it must
be in the proper protocol or format. Angelfire does not like TIF formatted graphics. Gifs, jpgs
and bmps are ok. If you have a tif,
you have instructions in another document for converting from TIFs to BMPs (BitMap)
using the Paint program in Windows.
Put your flash drive with the graphics on it in a USB port,.
On the Upload dialog space on Angelfire, click on
Browse. Find the graphics you want to upload. Then Click on the graphics you
want to upload to highlight it. Then click on Open. Back on the Angelfire Web
Shell screen, your file name will appear in the "File Upload" box.
Click on Upload button. Be very patient. This process can take several minutes.
Once the upload is completed you will see the identity of your file in the box
above the upload space.
Any time you want to change
your web page you should go first into angelfire.com, then into Angelfire’s web page editor, using your Username and
password. This will take you into you Web Shell screen.
Once in, go down to the
index.html and click. Then click on the Edit button. This will put you into the
editing screen where you can make the changes you want to your web page.
After you make your changes,
click on preview to look at your page.
Notice that you can go back
and forth between the edit screen and the preview screen by using the “Back”
and “Forward” buttons on the top of your screen.
You go through this cycle until you are satisfied.
When you are satisfied, be
sure to Save your changed web page. Again notice when
you save you go back to the Web Shell screen.
NOTE: ANGELFIRE HAS A GREAT HELP PAGE. TRY IT!
Using Internet Explorer type in the full URL of your
web page
When the web page displayed on the screen,.
Just go up and click on VIEW in the menu bar.
Then go down and click on PAGE SOURCE.
The HTML will be displayed on your screen.
This is how you (and others) can view your free web
site once it is built.
Start a session of Internet Explorer.
Go into your angelfire web site address
Examples my web site addresses on angelfire is as
follows: www.angelfire.com/planet/richnelson
http://mybitsnbytes.angelfire.com
or
http://demoforsp.angelfire.com
I suggest your look at these before you completely
build your own web page.
VIEWING YOUR SUBDIRECTORY WEB PAGES
If you have added a subdirectory to your web site
the way you view it is as follows using the same example:
www.angelfire.com/fl5/richnelson/webbuild.html
or
http://mybitsnbytes.angelfire.com/road.html
notice above the subdirectory
(extension) is added to the main web site address with a / before it.
*****
CREATING AN EXTENSION
WEB PAGE (SUBDIRECTORY) ON YOUR PRIMARY WEB SITE
One
of the great features of Angelfire is that they allow you to create extension
web pages on your primary web site. Of course you must already have an
angelfire web site Username and password.
After you have obtained an angelfire web site, Log into your regular
angelfire Directory Name as normal. You should now be in your Web Shell
screen
To
create an extension web page on your primary web page, go down to:
“Create
a New”, and put a bullet in Create File if it is not already there, and in the
blank space, type in a new directory name. - Example:
beginner.html or better yet if the web extension will have specific information give
it a name like mypix.html or instructions.html
Be
sure you add the .html. Then click on “Create”
This
will put you on a screen there you can make selections for your new web page.
Select
Basic by putting a bullet in the circle by clicking in the circle. Basic is
menu-driven and easy to use for your first web page. Advanced requires a
knowledge of HTML
CHOOSE
FROM ONE OF THE FOLLOWING:
Standard
Lines
List
My
Info
Photo
Album 1
Photo
Album 2
I
suggest you select Photo Album 1
Choose
a Styleset
Select
a styleset by clicking on the bullet over one of
them. You can make changes later.
Click
on “Submit”
This
should put you in the Web Shell screen for your web page.
Look
for your new web file name (i.e. beginner.html) in the box with Index.html and
other files and directories.
Click
on the new web directory name (i.e. page2.html) to highlight it
That
will put you in the Web Shell of your new web page..
Now
click on Preview just to see what is on the formatted web page.
Now
you can click on the Back button to make the changes you want.
After
you have made changes and checked them using Preview, be sure you
click the “Save” button to save the new page. If you don’t, you will lose all
the changes including the new page.
NOTE:
You
can add as many new web pages to your primary web page as your want; up to the
limit angelfire allows you. Which is about 50 megabits.