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The purpose of this website is to offer assistance to those who are novice website creators; and also, to provide the service of creating or helping to find customized graphics for those who want them. Even as the creator of many webpages, I am far from being an expert. However, I enjoy the webpage creation process as well as making graphics for those webpages. I have 2 websites devoted entirely to bordered backgrounds. By name, Cantex and ArtStorm . Between the two sites, there are well over 300 different bordered backgrounds all of which I created myself. Resources Good resources for creating webpages is an invaluble asset, especially if you want to personalize it with your particular style or flare. My experience is limited to the Angelfire system; and inspite of the inherit quirks in their system, its my opinion that they provide a good service. I suspect that most of the webpage service providers are fairly much the same. There are numerous other servers where you can build a webpage. To name of few of them: HTML Codes The first thing that beginner webpage builders run into is a mysterious wall called "HTML". (hypertext markup language), which is most commonly known as "the codes". An understanding of basic HTML codes is a must. They can be a bit intimidating at first, but just like academics, with a little studying, a firm grasp of the concepts comes in time; and, practice makes for almost perfect. I have provided a printable table of the codes here: The table comes from Webmonkey Reference . More HTML Codes Occasionally, a special character may need to be used. The codes for these special characters can be found here: This table also comes from Webmonkey Reference . And if you really want to get geeky, you can visit the W3C. Which stands for the World Wide Web Consortium. The amount of information that you will find there is mind boggling. Fonts Fonts are my passion. In fact, I am a registered member of Fonts Anon. Fonts are the heart and soul of many a webpage. Unfortunately, the Internet has discriminating tastes where fonts are concerned. In fact, there are only about 10 web based fonts. The reason for this is because those 10 are commonly included with most operating systems and word processing softwares. They include the benign Arial, Times New Roman, Courier, Verdana, and Comic Sans MS, etc. So, there are literally hundreds, perhaps thousands of really neat fonts out there for the downloading and using to your little heart's content, but unless the viewers of your webpage has them on their pc's, the really neat fonts are of little use visually. After doing a great deal of researching on the problem, I was resigned to using one of those benign fonts (I use Arial most of the time, here I choose to use Verdana for some strange reason), but for the dressing up of my webpages I use the Text Art feature of my Corel WordPerfect 7.0 to do such things as headers. I call them title bars. I save the images as HTML files, open them in Corel PhotoPaint (version 8), apply whatever effects to them that I want to, and then save them as either .jpg or .gif images. Then its just a matter of treating them as images in the webpage editor. I also use dingbats the same way. For example: When I created the "sun" part of the StormyDay logo and border, I used one of the characters available in the "Stars" dingbats available in my selection of fonts. By the way, I have 691 fonts on my computer. I did as I explained above, sent it to Corel PhotoPaint, manipulated the coloring of it and saved it as a .gif file so that I could make it transparent. Then, I used some clipart that I had to create the cloud and lightning bolt; and then, did likewise with it. It was just a matter of putting the two together by copy and paste and then saving the whole image as a .gif file. It may seem like a lot of work, but in reality, it only took me about 20 minutes to do the whole thing. This is about the only way of getting around the Internet's fussiness. Here are just a few of my favorite font resources. Clipart Clipart is also a good way to snaz up your webpage. I like to take line sketches and color them myself to use, as I did with the StormyDay logo. There are hundreds of clipart sites in the Internet, but the best place to start is Clipart.com Animated Gifs Animated gifs are wonderful things. But when I see some webpages, I'm often reminded of the old adage, "Too much of a good thing is too much." Some people go to the extreme with it. The gifs are easy to find, usually anywhere you find clipart. Color Codes Color can be the most important aspect of a well made webpage. Not only do you have to consider the background, but text fonts, too. And if you add links to your webpage, the "link", "vlink" (for visited link), and "alink" (for activated link), need to be deferred to as well. The most valuble source for color codes that I've found is Angel Colors. This webpage, and many others, is maintained by a lady known to many as "Angelblueyes." On her Angel Colors page, she provides the most extensive color chart that can found on the Internet. At least, as far as I'm concerned. At the bottom of that particular page, Angelblueyes provides a list of links that are also good resources for webpage building. MIDI's As with animated gifs, MIDI's can be overdone. Some webpages just do not need to have background music, while others would be meaningless without it. Only one of my webpages has a MIDI attached to it. If a MIDI is a must for your webpage, just do a search on your browser and you'll find plenty of sites to choose from. Tips and Tricks The best tip in the world for learning how to create webpages is to view the source codes of other webpages. This is a great way to see HTML codes at work. In the Internet Explorer browser, you go to "View," at the top, then go to "Source," and click on that. A Notepad window will open up and will display all the codes for that page. Print them out and study and compare the codes to the actual webpage itself. I'm not real certain of this, but I believe that Netscape browsers work a little differently. I think what Netscape users have to do is to right click on the webpage itself, and then find something like "HTML source" on the dropdown menu. The next tip I have, is to find a "webring" that corresponds to the nature or topic of your webpage. There are all kinds of webrings; everything from Arts and crafts to cars to religions to whatever. By joining a webring, you can increase the traffic to your webpage. Its also a good idea to add a "guestbook" to your page. Its a good way to get input from your visitors; find out what they liked about your webpage. Tables I have put what information that I have to offer about tables on another page since it does take up a bit of space. I realize that I haven't covered EVERYTHING about creating webpages here. Such as applets and MP3, etc. And I suppose, that as I learn more myself, I'll be updating and adding on to this page. Here a few graphics that I have created. You are welcome to use them if you like. Some of My Personal Webpages Email Me if you would like to make any suggestions or would like my help with graphics. If you use any of my graphics, please feel free to add my logo to your webpage. Right click on the logo, and then, "Save Picture As" to your hard drive to upload into your webpage editor. Then, add these codes to your webpage editor: <a href="https://www.angelfire.com/on3/stromyday58/index.html"> <img src="SDlogo1.jpg"> </a>
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