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HOW - making web pages
BACK END
There are many free online guides and resources for web design. I would recommend the tutorials at W3schools.com, including HTML, CSS, multimedia, JavaScript, and PHP. If you're working on your own: you don't have to complete the entirety of all of these tutorials -- just skim for the highlights and try a few exercises.
Here are some other important things you should know about creating web pages:
• HTML is a standard maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3), an open international organization that defines and updates best practices for the Web.
• Many web sites that you interact with today, including this course website, allow you to post your own text and media through a "front-end" interface. Thus, you no longer have to know much HTML or programming to put stuff on the internet. Such platforms define how much HTML formatting you can use when posting -- it's typically limited to certain tags.
• To create a web page from scratch, you can just write it in a text editor using HTML. To put it on the internet though, you would need a web space and a means to upload files (typically an FTP software program).
• More advanced functions, like CSS for styles and JavaScript for interactivity, sometimes require putting some code in the <head> section of the web page (as opposed to the <body>). Therefore, they often won't work if you try to post them on "front-end" platforms like this one.
• The <object> tag enables you to embed some kinds of multimedia files in web pages. However, HTML has had limited audio/video capabilities. Thus far, most streaming media has relied on first uploading it into some system (YouTube, for example) that will generate a Flash player. This is slated to change imminently with HTML 5 (the latest update to HTML), which has enhanced support for including multimedia within web pages (including <video> and <audio> tags).
• Server-side programming like PHP allows the browser to communicate with the web server to dynamically generate interactive web pages. It also requires a database to store a site's information.
• There are many free resources online that enable you to generate CSS, copy JavaScripts, install software, and so on, which means that in many cases you don't have to do your own programming when creating web pages. There are also software programs that streamline the process of web design.
• If you're creating your own HTML files and you need a place to host them, Stanford offers web services to everyone.
FRONT END
Free content platforms:
Wordpress (full-featured blog, many plug-ins)
Tumblr (simple blog, supports multimedia)
Weebly (template-based drag-and-drop sites)
Wix (flash templates)
Google sites (more flexible templates)
Services to build on:
Wikis (or many other free versions)
Google maps (click My Maps and "Create a new map" to make a custom map)
Popcorn.js (interactive HTML5 video)
Memebase (tools to create/exploit/track graphic internet memes)
Pictogame (insert your own images in a flash game)
Last updated 380 days ago by Julie Levin Russo
