The first thing to make is to put black thoughts on white. For that, the simplest way is to take some blank papers, to place them at horizontal so that they have the form of a screen and to write and draw what one would like the visitors to see. On the first screen, you can place a link, a name, initials and some basic information introducing the visitor to the other pages of the site. It will be your first page which will correspond to the welcome page of your website. Around this page you will place your other pages by gathering your topics and your ideas so that the whole should hold and have a certain logic, which will be appreciated by the visitors of your site. If the ideas do not come easily, you can browse the Internet and visit all kinds of sites by taking the time to observe how the texts and the images are presented, where they are placed in the page, and what draws our attention. 



At this moment you can start to write the text which will appear in the various pages. It is then time to decide which drawings or photographs you will incorporate in your pages. Think that your illustrations must be low-sized to shorten the loading time and that they must be of quality. All these points are important to satisfy the visitor of your website. It is necessary to use a graphic software to prepare the images but a low-end software, like Microsoft Paint sold with Windows, can be enough in the majority of cases.

Preferably, you will save your images in GIF (256 colors) or JPEG (up to 16 million colors) formats, which are the two graphic formats most often supported on Internet browsers. In the majority of the cases, except for photographs, one cannot see the difference between a 256 colors image and a 24 bits image because in fact the 256 dominant colors of an image are retained by the graphic editor at the time of the saving. The main difference should be at the downloading time level, which will be shorter if the file is less large. It is often preferable that the photos should be saved in JPEG to preserve a maximum of colors and nuances.

There are books which one can buy in a bookstore and various information on Internet for those who want to know more before programming their web page. It is very easy to find a HTML programming guide. The HTML is the standard file type used by the web servers. As this way of combining images and texts appears a little spectacular, one would be tempted to believe that it is difficult to make but it is not the case. HTML is a true programming language invented at the beginning of the 1990s which became a standard thereafter. It was important to reach a standard so that a maximum of users throughout the world could benefit from it. The HTML documents are displayed in about the same way on the various types of computers.

One can use the HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) to produce all kinds of documents: electronic mail with integrated images, news, presentation documents, newspapers items or even electronic books. The servers of the World Wide Web give access to files encoded in HTML which can automatically establish links to the information, images or sounds produced by the files installed on the same server as well as on other servers of the same type anywhere in the world. It is very practical and of an impressive effectiveness.

A document in HTML thus contains standard text and labels placed between two hooks with a reference name and attributes. For each specific area, one finds a sign marking its beginning (example: ) and most of the time another indicating its end (example: ), which contains an oblique bar. Other labels involve a specific symbol like
for a return to the line or

---

for the tracing of a horizontal line. The basic HTML language evolved to new complementary functions as well as more advanced languages (Java, JavaSript, VB Script, VML, ASP, PHP).

One can create HTML pages with all kinds of softwares. It is a question of finding those which correspond best to your needs and means. Ask the web hosting provider the name of the storage index and the method of transfer. As your HTML files will be stored on the computer of a web hosting provider, you must ask him in which index of his computer they will be placed. He can give you only one simple index name or a whole series of sub-directories to cross to arrive at your files. Thus ask the web hosting provider the prefixes (paths to be followed) of your file names. If you wish to establish hypertexts links with other HTML pages notice the path to be followed to reach it. Be cautious, any typing error will prevent the establishment of the link.