by Matthew Bates www.mattbates.net
Step 3. Making Your First Homepage
Now that you have connected to the space on the internet that you have bought it is time to fill it up with your artwork! The first page that you should make is your homepage. This page will be the page that most people see first. It will be the page that you see when you type www.yourname.com . This page is your storefront window to the world.
Remember in Step 1 when you prepared your images for the internet? Now the thumbnail images are going to come in handy. To begin you should open up Dreamweaver and make a HTML page. If it does not open to one automatically then just go to the File > New or Ctrl N. Now choose Table from the common menu. Make it have 1 row and 1 column with a width of 800 pixels. This will give you a nice space to work in which will fit on any computer screen. It is always good to remember that most people have limited screens so less is more in this case. Click inside of the table and write Welcome to (Your Name's) Website! You can control the size of the type in the properties box on the bottom of the Dreamweaver template. The properties box is important, it is where you will add all of the eventual links and color variations. Center the type and press return so the cursor is directly below the type. Now add another table, this time add 3 rows and 3 columns with a width of 100%, This is a table within a table and will be constricted to the outer table's dimensions. Click inside one of the smaller tables boxes so that the cursor is blinking inside of it. In the properties menu center the cursor with the centering type tool. Now from the insert menu choose image. Choose an image from your thumbnail collection of pictures. Now repeat this process with the remaining 8 cells until you have 9 thumbnail images on your page. Now go to the Modify menu and choose page properties. Make sure to Title your homepage using keywords. Keywords are the words that people type when they use search engines. Don't use too many, just a destinct description of your site such as: (Your Name) Original Oil Paintings in the Style of Abstract Impressionism. Also you can choose the background color of your page, and the color of the type. Now click on the bottom of the first table and add a contact e-mail address. To make it work select with your cursor the e-mail address so that it turns dark with light letters. Then in the properties menu you will see a link box. Type in mailto:yourname@blabla.com and you have made your very first hyperlink! Write Biography next to the contact info and Save the page as index.html . This is very important as the homepage must be called in this way. Your page should look like this:
Flowers - Still Life - Cityscapes - Landscapes - Statues - Email