A Basic Billboard Site
Companies spend thousands of dollars whipping up slick Web sites that take weeks to explore from end to end. But if all you want to do is hang out your shingle or make yourself known to people with similar interests, a single, straightforward Web page will suffice. Begin by downloading one of the three variations of our Billboard template from the list on the last page. To do so, right-click the template's link and choose Save Target As (in Internet Explorer) or Save Link Target As (in Mozilla or Netscape). Be sure to place the unzipped HTML file in an easy-to-remember folder on your system.
The Composer Web editor included with the latest versions of the Mozilla and Netscape browsers (1.4 and 7.1, respectively) is a more-than-adequate program for editing our templates. Though the instructions below specify Composer, you can accomplish the same tasks by using nearly any Web editor. If you don't already have one of these two browsers, download Netscape or get a free copy of Mozilla, or visit our Downloads library (and scroll down the page) for other editors.
To open Composer, launch Mozilla or Netscape and choose Window, Composer. Alternatively, with Netscape, you can start Composer by choosing Start, Programs (All Programs in Windows XP), Netscape, Composer. Click File, Open File, navigate to and select the HTML file you just saved, and choose the Normal tab near the bottom of the screen. To replace the template's placeholder text, put the cursor in the text and press Backspace or Delete to remove text before or after the cursor, respectively. Or select all of the text in a heading or paragraph, press Delete, and either type new text to replace it or paste text copied from another program over the selection. To avoid deleting hidden HTML formatting tags, don't select anything before or after the visible text. If you accidentally delete more than you intended, press Ctrl-Z to undo the damage.
You may have information to share that works best as a list. To create a list, simply type the relevant items in one of the paragraph areas, select the items to be formatted as a list, choose Format, List, and then select either Bulleted or Numbered. For font effects such as italics, bold, highlighting, or underlining, select the text and click the appropriate toolbar button.
To customize the template's solitary link, replace the link text with your own, right-click the link, and choose Link Properties. Enter a file name, a Web address, or an e-mail address (precede an e-mail address with mailto:), and then click OK. Depending on what you enter in the Link Location field, Composer may uncheck or disable the 'URL is relative to page location' option. For best results, leave that setting checked. Be sure to change the page's title (the text that displays in the browser's title bar): Choose Format, Page Title and Properties, enter your preferred descriptive title in the Title field, and click OK. To publish your completed Web page, click the Publish icon.
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