How The Heck Do I...

Creating Your Home Page

Part 3, Continuation of Step 4 of Creating your Home Page...

Now let's see how we can insert a hyperlink.  We'll move across to the left-hand column on our home page. At the top, where it says "List here", let's highlight the words and change them to "My Favourite Websites". Then we'll change the cell colour to yellow.

How do you change the cell colour? Just right click in the cell, and choose "Modify cell properties" from the drop-down menu. A box will pop up. Next to the box that says "Background Colour", click on the arrow next to 'None'. A colour chart will pop up. Choose the colour you want, then click on "Modify cell". If you choose yellow, your cell will now be coloured yellow. Experiment with different colours.

Now, where it says "List Number 1", we'll type in a link. Suppose we want to provide a link to the National Geographic Homework Help site.

1. Type in the name of the site - e.g.: "National Geographic Homework Help"

2. Click on the link icon in the toolbar. This is the picture of the world with a chain link under it.

A box will open up asking you for information. You do these three things:

1. Type in the URL of the website (make sure it starts with http://)

2. Where it says 'target window', click on the little arrow. Choose 'blank'. This means that when the website opens up, it will appear in a new window. This is good - it means that your visitor won't be taken away from your site without knowing how to get back!

3. Click on the "insert link" box.

Now your link will appear underlined. This means that it is active - when your visitor clicks on it, it will take them to the National Geographic Homework site.

We're almost done!!!

You still have parts of your page to edit - but now you know how to make it work. You know how to upload pictures, how to insert and edit tables and cells, and how to make a hyperlink.

All you have to do is save your index page so people can see your website. DO THIS:

1. Go to the top left hand corner of your page.

2. Click on the little arrow beside the disk icon.

3. Choose 'save and exit'.

You will get a message that says your page has been saved. Click "OK".

To make sure that you still have a copy of your page - in case anything goes wrong - we will also save a copy of the 'index.html' page. (Then if you make a big mistake that you can't figure out how to fix, you can simply rename the copy 'index.html' and you'll be back where you started.) Do this:

1. Click on 'copy' on the right hand side of the row that your index.html file is in.

2. A file will automatically be created called "copy_of_index.html"

3.Click on "OK".

4. In your File Manager, you will see that you now have a copy of your index file for safekeeping. This is a great feature - you can do this with any file before you start making changes!

One last thing... no doubt you would like to see what your page looks like! You can do this in two ways: First, we'll view it from within File Manager:

Just click on the 'view' link next to your 'edit' link on the same row as your index page. You can do this with any file you create, to see if it looks the way you want. You will see it as your visitors will see it.

OR... type in your website URL into your browser (such as Internet Explorer): e.g. www.MyNewSite.com - and your new page should pop up!

End of Create Your Home Page       

Use BleepSoft to Build a Home Page?
Part 3