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LESSON #1

I will assume that you have downloaded AOLPRESS and installed it on your computer. All you had to do was downlo0ad the file by clicking on it, save it to your hard drive then double click it.

(1)

CREATE A WORKING DIRECTORY ON YOUR HARD DRIVE

First thing you need to do is make a new directory on your computer. To do this in Windows XP you will click on
START > MY COMPUTER > Local Disk (C:)

Everything on your hard drive will be displayed.

Now click on
FILE > NEW > FOLDER
What will then appear is similar to this:

While the words New Folder (XP calls directories folders) are highlighted TYPE mywebsite

See how mywebsite took the place of the words New Folder? Click on an empty part of the screen and your directory has been created.

Close all the boxes you just opened you won't need them any longer.

(2)

CREATING YOUR FIRST WEBPAGE

Okay I want you to open AOLPRESS and click:
File>New>New Page

It will look like this:

A new blank page will pop up similar to this:

In the space where it now says
Please title this page (Page 1)
Type My First Webpage

Now you should look something like this:

Now click
File > Save As
The Save As dialogue box will pop up and look like this:

Type what you see above into your Page Location box that is
C:\mywebsite\index.htm
Then click okay.

Your just made your first webpage using the editor! True it is a blank sheet but believe it or not you just did the hardest part. Master this and you can do the rest easily.

Now we just named the file for this website index.htm. The first page of your website should ALWAYS be index.htm and all other pages must link off of it.

Now practice this for a few days by making more blank webpages. Call them index2.htm, index3.htm. Start from opening Aolpress each time. This will get you in the habit of making a new page from a blank editor.

ONLINE WEB EDITOR Copyright 2006 Maynardville.Com


FAQ

Q) Why do we have to name the first webpage in our site index.htm?

All modern browsers upon opening a directory or folder search for index.htm by default. If the person did not indicate a specific file name the browser assumes index.htm. When you go to Maynardville.Com what you are really visiting is:

http://www.maynardville.com/index.htm

Even though all you typed in was
http://www.maynardville.com

Now if I had made the first page of Maynardville.Com spastic.htm instead of index.htm it would not work.

If someone typed in
http://www.maynardville.com
And there was no index.htm what they would see is:
ERROR 404 Page not found.

Q) My AOLPRESS has different colors. Like where your's is blue mine is brown, why?

The colors of the things in a window are determined by your window settings on your computer. the colors displayed do not affect the program.

Q) I typed "My First Webpage" into the title line like you said but I can't see where it does anything to the page.

It doesn't while you are editing. But the title is on the top of the browser when someone visits your page. It is also wha search engines use to name your page when they find it.

What you did there in the editor was the same as writing the following code by hand:

Copy the code from the box above and paste it into our online editor at the top of the page. Click View to see what it looks like in a browser. Look up at the very top and you'll see where the title is displayed.