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Tips for Novice Web Builders
- Think of your Web site as ONE ENTITY
OF MANY PARTS. In English this means one simple thing:
always, always, always have your COMPLETE "public_html"
folder on your computer whenever you work on your site.
The "one entity" is the entire "public_html"
folder, and the many parts are each individual page, image
file, song file, movie file, etc. Experienced Web developers
can make "free-standing" pages that are saved
in various places on their computers, but novice builders
are asking for trouble if they work this way. Always save
pages inside your COMPLETE public_html folder as one of
your first steps whenever you are building a new page.
- Follow the THREE STEP PROCESS
of site building:
- STEP 1: Download the complete public_html folder from
the server.
- STEP 2: Work on your site.
- STEP 3: Upload your revised site to the server.
- Have multiple backups of your public_html folder (one
on the server, one on your school laptop, one on your home
computer, one on your flash drive, if you have one).
- Whenever you work on your site--especially if you are
creating a new page--hit the "Save" command early
and often. In fact, when you create a new page, the first
thing you should do, even if the page is blank, is SAVE
it. When you save a page, you name it and GIVE IT A PLACE
TO LIVE (forever). Location is everything in a Web site.
Every file in a site is organized in relation to all the
other files. So it is important to save your files somewhere
and to keep them there, once they are save.
- When you work with images, think "backwards"—i.e.,
first find the image file and save it somewhere in your
public_html folder, then insert the image. Anywhere
in the public_html folder will work (as long as you don't
move it later)—but the logical place to save the image
file is in the folder named "images" inside of
public_html. After you have saved the image somewhere in
public_html, open Nvu and use the toolbar command to insert
the image.
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