March 1, 2004
A: FROM MENTOR LYNN FRASER IN NEVADA
There a lot of good visual web editing tools out there for basic HTML
generation (they generate the code FOR you). Front Page is one that is easy
to use and widely supported by servers your hosting plan will use. It is a
lot like editing a document in Word or Powerpoint - changing
fonts/colors/etc will be familiar to you in this way. You can use embedded
tables to easily manage positioning of text and graphics in your page so it
doesn't read like a Word document. Visual editors are great for beginning
web developers for two reasons: 1) They are extremely easy to use 2) They
are a great tool to teach yourself HTML coding - you can allow the visual
editor to generate the code for you, then look at the code with an HTML
reference book at hand and you'll quickly learn the basics to generate any
web page. Something to note when you get into more advanced HTML coding
however - these visual editors will alway modify code for you, and sometimes
this isn't such a good thing. I develop complex websites and applications
for which I want compete control of the code being generated, and find that
the only sure way to do this is to write the HTML code myself. Also
something to look at when building a website - graphics are a great part of
any website, and you can download free graphics from websites such as
www.photodisc.com, www.iconbazaar.com, and more (do a search on google -
there are a lot out there) to enhance your website. So good luck! If you are
at all creative and have used any kind of visual document generator (Word,
Powerpoint, etc) you should have no problem with learning basic web
development, especially when there is already an operating website you can
start from.
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A: FROM MENTOR KRIS MOODY IN NH
It's actually very easy to make a basic, simple web site if you start
out just wanting text on it. Then you can work on changing and improving
it to add graphics and other cool stuff. I found this site a little while
ago, and I learned a lot from it. Check it out.
http://www.htmlgoodies.com/tutors/
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A: FROM MENTOR ESHE PICKETT IN IL
Depending on the type of updates you plan to do, the process can be quite painless and simple. I am going to assume that you are simply doing additions or changes to static (a file whose information stays the same unless physically altered) html files. In this case you only need a text editor, notepad will do, but MS Word also has a feature to do visual editing of html files. You will also need an ftp (File Transfer Protocol) client to upload the files you have changed (nice free one: http://www.ftpplanet.com/downloadLE.asp).

To edit your files, all you have to do is open the original file in the editor of your choice and search for the text you want to edit. Add or change the information save the file then use your ftp client to connect to your server and upload the files you have changed to the correct directory. I would encourage you to understand the basic html tags prior to editing your files, especially if you are going to use a text editor instead of a visual editor.

If you have access to Dreamweaver or FrontPage (both popular development tool for web programmers) this will further simplify the process of editing for you.Feel free to write back if you have additional questions or need further clarification on anything I have discussed.