In the previous lesson I talked about 5 different ways to build a website.
Today I’m going to be covering one of those methods in more depth. More specifically, I’m going to show you how to build a website from scratch using HTML without any special tools…
(Watch this video…)
Main points:
< >I recommend Notepad++:
NOTE: Regarding my instructions in the video… In order to change the file extension from .txt to .html you must have your file extensions visible.
For Windows XP go to:
Tools >> Folder Options >> Click the “View” tab >> Make sure there is NO checkmark by “Hide extensions for known file types”
For Windows Vista:
1. Open Folder Options by clicking the Start button , clicking Control Panel, clicking Appearance and Personalization, and then clicking Folder Options.
2. Click the View tab, and then, under Advanced settings clear the Hide extensions for known file types check box, and then click OK.
http://www.w3schools.com (My favorite… Great resource for CSS and PHP too)
also http://htmldog.com
Action step:
1) Create a web page using HTML.
The next step will be to upload your new page to the web, and I’ll be covering that in the next lesson.
As always, you are welcome to post your questions and comments below 🙂
Have a great day!
I may have changed the video settings, but you should definitely be able to access them. Are you getting an error?
Perhaps try a different browser, such as Firefox?
And make sure you have the latest Flash player installed…
thank you Eric.your teaching is very usefull to me.
Once again Eric a very good lesson. Great stuff for us nebies.
Hi Eric, I’ve understood everything up until now. And, I understand the HTML. Where you lost me was in bringing up NotePad on the desktop and renaming it. I don’t get the same drop down menu when I right click in the notepad screen. I’m going to continue with creating the document and see if it is read as a website page. Thanks,
Chris
Hi Eric, I got my html document written in NotePad, but could not figure out how to open it in Internet Explorer. I’m lost at this point. But, I will figure it out.
Thanks,
Chris
Eric,
This is another great lesson and thanks for your response on my follow up question on lesson 23 (I feel closer and more organized to the relaunch of my Dad’s website). I learned just a little with Yahoo html help a month ago and also by searching on the internet to understand what was written on my Dad’s website. I was able to add title and mega tags to the existing home page. After this lesson I was able to create a practice web page based on your instructions in the video with Notepad and opened it in Internet Explorer. It feels great to be able to write from scratch.
Your reference to w3schools.com is terrific. I have been looking to find good site to search or learn some of the tags but most of them I found were cumbersome and not comprehensive. I am half way down learning the basics of html and want to complete the whole thing including the advanced stuff. I’m the kind of person that I feel the need to understand what’s going on even though I may not choose to do it from scratch.
I have meant to finish learning the html before moving on to lesson 29 FTP upload, but can’t really wait to see how it’s done so that I can back up some of the existing pages on my Dad’s site. Thanks so much for the great lessons!!!
Shirley
Chris,
Please refer to the section under the Main Points for this lesson. You have to go to the Control Panel where you find the folder options and clear the check mark for “Hide extensions for Known File types”. Otherwise, when you change the extension of the file you created with NotePad it will be xxxx.html.txt and that’s the reason you can’t open the file with Internet Explorer. I ran into the same problem in the beginning. Once you clear that “Hide extension for Known File types” , you will be able to change the file from xxx.txt to xxx.html and then you can open and view it in Internet Explorer. Hope this helps.
Shirley
thanks,that html explaination has cleared up everything.
i have been following ur lessons thanks for it
Thank you Eric I’m really new to this, before your lessons I did not know what an html was now I’m learning to make one once again thank you.
Thanks Eric for tips. This will save me tons of money paying webmasters like I did in the past. I appreciate it.
i am a designer auto cad master from wazirabad pk
before i started taking your lessons i went to the public library and got some books on html wow, was i over my head.i copied down four pages of html that i thought i might need sometime.now i’m glad to see i didn’t waste my time now i can look at them and know what i’m looking at, its easier now because of this lesson.i put after each code i copied what that code would do, now i won’t feel like a dummy when i look at it.the codes i copied down are the ones i expect i will be using the most.thanks again for another eye opening lesson.
great lesson on html. I learned alot thanks,
Thanks for the HTML basics. I do agree you really have to understand HTML and maybe a bit of . Even if you use a tool…sometimes you have to add code and you have to understand where to add or replace.
For example I just had to add code for Patdotcom pay buttons….
I also had to add code for autoresponder integration. Next I found that was driving a drop-in box…and because I didn’t know , I couldn’t fix the way it was operating. So I had to call on tech support to fix it for me…I waited a day for that…so not knowing these languages cost time and Benjamin Franklin would be mad because after all…time is money.
this keeps deleting the word
j-a-v-a-s-c-r-i-p-t is not showing up…
Hmmm… it must be a security setting trying to prevent anyone from injecting code into comments.
Hi Eric,
You are doing a great job, infact i,ve been enjoying all the lesson’s since inception.
Keep up the good work.
Theresa
Nigeria
Hey Eric – I see lots of questions from Mac Users which you aren’t answering! Is there any way you can make alternative suggestions to your recommendations for your Mac followers……..I am getting really frustrated at nit being able to try out what you are suggesting….
Thanks
Geraldine
I guess I haven’t seen those questions? Can you be more specific about what you’re not able to try on the mac?
Hi Eric
You are a great teacher. The thing I like about your teaching is that they are bite size; you also include tips on how and where you check and validate what you have done.
Great respect for you
HI Eric,
I have am very appreciative in receiving your tips and in doing so I have set my mother up a website for an E-Book she wrote using wordpress. I am on final steps to having it set up and selling through Clickbank then onto marketing…however I have hit a roadblock. My “thank-you’ page that Clickbank links to after someone has made a purchase sometimes links through and other times comes to a ‘404 page’. I have also found that the buttons on my site linking to other pages are sometimes in the right place on the template and other time running into the letter on my site. I asked for wordpress assistance through their forum as to the cause of the issues above and I was told to fix up my errors in HTML and use the “Validator” site as you suggest above. Now as I have not really added or changed a lot of coding, how do the errors occur (there is 200 errors)? I am also pretty new to coding and have no clue how to fix these errors, can you suggest a website or someone who could fix this for me? Can you submit this task to someone on Rentacoder? Any ideas appreciated!
Loving your tips! Look forward to the next 50! Cheers from Australia.
Rachel Johnston
That is strange that it sometimes is 404 error, and sometimes not. What happens if you just paste the URL of the thank-you page into your browser? your site seems to be working fine so it seems like it might be a simple URL error.
I would not worry too much about the validator, so don’t worry about the 200 errors.
You could submit it on Rentacoder. I would guess you could get it fixed for $10 or less.
Cheers Eric! I changed the URL and seems to now work. Shall submit to Clickbank and fingers crossed works for them.
Was unsure if the errors had anything to do with it. Always good for another opinion, Thanks! Cheers Rachel
HI Eric,
I tested my site in browsershots.com and the several page links are in the wrong place on my template in some browsers and in other browsers they are ok. Is this a coding thing or has the site width run out of room as i have added extra pages. Any ideas?
Thanks Rachel
From what I’ve seen, browsershots gives a pretty accurate portrayal of your site in other browsers. So I think the main thing I would look at is what browsers does it have the problem with? If it is some of the more obscure ones I wouldn’t worry too much, but I would make sure your site is compatible with the most recent few versions of Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari.
I just changed my template a week ago and upon validating lots of errors were found but I have been looking for those “characters” on the report but I can’t find them on my XHTML.
If the site looks and functions properly, then I would not worry about the validation.
Hi Eric. Thanks for the wonderful tutorials. I have really impressed with all the videos. I really learned many new things which i didnt knew.
Well i checked my website (www.TheBigOS.com) on browsershots.org and found most of it right. But while practically using it IE 6, sometime it gives an awkward look on big resolutions. Y is it so? What should i do?
I would not worry too much if it looks awkard. The only way to make it fit all resolutions is to make all the sizes relative, but that usually results in the whole thing looking worse. As long as it’s clear and easy to navigate, it should be fine.
Hi Eric,
You made HTML look easy to use. Before that, I know nuts about it. Thank you for the fruitful tutorial.
Regards,
Bert
Hi Eric,
I tried using the method you thought trying to create HTML webpage. After changing the text file to “index html”, the file is not in Internet explorer. It is just a normal text file.
Please advise what happen. Or perhaps my PC is not configured.
Regards,
Bert
Hello Bert,
It appears that “html” is currently a part of the file name itself. When saving your webpage, be sure to choose “html” as the desired file type, and use only “index” as your file name!
Thanks Eric. As a website builder I use freewebs and they make it so simple to build a web site it is the lazy mans way to do things free. But Knowing how it works is awesome. I wish I would of got into this alot earlier. I love it.I built my first web page from scratch and validated it. Can you add a easy way to add that DOC type. I went to my webs site and captured it there. I missed alot of you stuff in emails because I just thought your was another guru trying to cash in. I will be paying more attention to your emails frome now on. Great info thank you again
Hi Eric,
HTML video came at the right time, I have been running square circles around how to get pages up for a funnel system.
Been OK working in WP with normal blog but putting wrapping my head around how to put up a sales system has driven me totally mad – until you came along. Thanks
I am a beginner in HTML. Now I am studying your lessons in order to create a web
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At 2009.12.21 18:12, Bill said:
Hi Eric, I too am having trouble trying to change to html. I read what you wrote however when you say for Windows XP go to: Tools >> Folder Options
Click the “View” tab
Make sure there is NO checkmark by “Hide extensions for known file types”
My question is: Where do we start? In a Notepad window or ???? I am a “NEWBIE”.
Bill
Go to START then click on Control Panel. Then click Folder options.
Hi,
I have tryed to do this in Vista but it is not working. Can you help.
For Windows Vista:
1. Open Folder Options by clicking the Start button , clicking Control Panel, clicking Appearance and Personalization, and then clicking Folder Options.
2. Click the View tab, and then, under Advanced settings clear the Hide extensions for known file types check box, and then click OK.
Hello Eric… I have a burning question. I just purchased for a great offer, where I received a finished landingpage with a proven salesletter 🙂
I do not want to change the salesletter, because I am worried to spoil it, but what is about duplicate content? Can I rank with this page, or will Google slap me?
The domain with the product name is of course not available anymore. Is it better to buy a domain with the product name and an extension, or buy a domain which includes a certain keyword within this particular niche?
I hope so much that you have an answer for me, since I do not want to make a mistake in the beginning, and I would like to go online with this site very soon.
Thank you very much in advance.
All the best,
Arne
Good questions…
It really depends on your marketing strategy.
If your main focus is SEO, then you would definitely want to make the content unique, and perhaps choose a domain containing a keyword.
If you’re going for more of a “branding” strategy, then the product name as the domain would be better.
And if you’re marketing it with paid traffic or an email list, then it may be best to stick with the “proven” copy (although even proven copy can usually be improved so it would be good to do some split testing).
Hi Eric,
I have been following your tips and I am so excited and thankful for your kindness. You are gifted and generous. Keep it up. I realise that some people as well as me did not manage to view and follow lesson 28 to the end (16 min). The video stopped at 9 min. Is there anything you can do to help?
God bless you and your family.
Hmmm, that is strange. Have you tried all these solutions?
love learning thanks great info barbara
C:\Documents and Settings\Tom Lincoln\Desktop\index.html.txt
When I did this lesson I had trouble as you can see above with the .txt. It would not go away. What did I do wrong when I made my new text document in to an html file?
Your help is appreciated and I love your lessons.. from a newb. LOL
read the comments above eric I think I fixed it. Thanks
Fixed and made my first webpage very cool!!!!!!!