Simple Web Pages

Botany 606: Graduate Research Skills

Get Your Resources Ready

• Make a folder to hold your web page project.
• Place any photos you intend to use on your web page into this folder.

Get the Page Established

• Start FrontPage.
• Type a title line (choose carefully since this line will not only appear on the page, but it will be the page title as well).
• Save the web page (even though you just started it) with an appropriate name.
  • "default.htm" is used by many server to be the page used if no page is otherwise given for a folder.
  • Use all lower case (especially if the page will be moved to a unix-based system).
  • No spaces or punctuation in the name (except "-" and "_").
  • Keep the name relatively short.
• Make the background (Format -> Background -> Colors: Background) white.

Work on the Major Organization of the Page

• Decide on a page layout.
• Use a table  to hold multiple columns.
  • Don't make too many columns and rows in the table. Just a few is usually enough.
  • Set the Table Properties (Right Click on the table) to Cell Padding: 5, Cell Spacing: 0, Borders Size: 0.  This causes the table lines to disappear and the materials inside the table won't be too close to each other.
  • Select an entire column (click about the column when you see a "down arrow") and choose whether you want it to have a fixed width or for the column width (Right Click, Cell Properties -> Specify Width)  to self adjust.
  • You can fill cells with a colored background for emphasis (Right Click, Cell Properties -> Color: Background).
• Use Horizontal Lines to break a page into sections (Insert -> Horizontal Line).
• Save your file frequently.

Enhance Your Page

• Insert pictures (Insert -> Picture -> From File...).
• Link pictures, if necessary, to larger versions (Select picture, Insert -> Hyperlink... -> Address).
• Make text hyperlinks.
• At the bottom of the page, put a "global link" (such as the Botany Dept. Home Page) and hyperlink the "global link."
• At the bottom of the page, put the function that automatically inserts the date the web page was last updated (Insert -> Date and Time).

Move the Web Page to the Server

• Use SSH to connect with the server.
• Drag and Drop your file into your folder inside the gradstud folder.

Last Updated: 09/03/2007