How to Make/Create a Web Page

Web pages are the building blocks of a web site. Building a website is a matter of creating and linking web pages together.

It isn't difficult to make a web page. If you are able to create a document using a word processor like word, then you are able to make a web page.

However although it is very easy to create a very simple web page, creating a professional looking fully functional web page does involve learning a little more than basic html.

Getting Started

For beginners then the easiest way to start is to create some basic pages.

I recommend that you start by making pages using HTML which will show you the basics, and then do a similar exercise using  a web page editor.

• Making web pages Using Notepad and basic HTML
• How to Create a Web Page Using A WYSIWYG Editor

Although learning HTML is useful you will be relieved to know that only a basic understanding of HTML is required as it is more common to use WYSIWYG web page editors and pre designed templates.

Unless you are going to become a professional web designer then free editors like Trellian Webpage should be adequate.

More details about the editor types can be found in Web Page and HTML Editors Explained .

Web Page Structure

A web page consists of two components.

•  A visible component (what the visitor actually sees)
•  An invisible one (formatting, scripting components, meta tags etc)

Shown here in the schematic

 When examining the web page HTML this is what we see:

The Hidden Web Page Components.

These components are not visible to the web page visitors and are used to provide information for use by web browsers and search engines (meta tags) or additional functionality (scripts).

They are also normally invisible in most web page editors (in normal mode). However most web page editors have a view source tab which reveals the actual HTML coding and the hidden meta tags, scripts and comments.

Because you need to view the HTML source code itself to see these tags, and in most editors to modify them, they are frequently overlooked. In addition, most editors will enter default information for some of the meta tags. See HTML Meta Tags Explained

The Visible Web Page

The visible parts of the web page consist of the actual web page content, logo and the website/page navigation. A typical web page is show below:

The navigation and logo areas are generally the same for all pages on the site ( web page templates)-See Understanding web Page Layout.

The page structure is taken care of by the page template, which you can create yourself, but for a professional looking site is is more common to use a professionally designed Web Page/Site Template.

Naming Your Pages

The page name consists of two parts. The name plus the extension. For example the home page is usually called index.html.

Index = the page name and html is the extension.

You can find out more about choosing names and the significance of the file extensions in the Web page Names article.