Word allows you to create simple web pages very easily (however, in my experience, you can do a little better job with Wordperfect than Word---Microsoft figures that if you want to make a really nice web page you'll buy their Front page product). You can go to the File/New menu and select one of their pre-designed Web Pages (try the Web Page Wizard). This is the easiest way to proceed as the menu choices will be designed for web page creation. Another way to proceed is simply to start out with a document and type in your text and then from the File menu choose Save as HTML. With either method you can paste in graphics from other programs just as you normally would in creating a term paper, report, etc. My advice is to start with one of the web page choices from the File/New menu.
To create this document I used the Web Page Wizard with the Simple Layout. I then pasted and typed text into that layout and created a hyperlink and two bookmarks (see below). Finally, I used Font, Text Colors, and Background from the Format menu and then saved the file (Save As will automatically come up with the html option).
In making your web page, you can create hyperlinks (see ** below) by highlighting the text that will serve as the link button and then go to the Insert/Hyperlink menu (creating hyperlinks can also be done in document mode and also by using the "world-link" icon from the toolbar). The top box in the Hyperlink dialog box is where you place the relevant URL or file name. (To get really "fancy", you can place a small graphic on your page, highlight it, and turn it into a hyperlink.) Under the Format/Font menu you can change how the text appears (font and color can be changed). Under Format/Background you can change the overall appearance of your page, affecting the background color or even selecting a patterned background. The Insert/Horizontal-Line menu can be used to place a horizontal break line on your page (such as the line of leaves that separates the text and return link at the bottom of this page; note that an ordinary horizantal line is part of the html code, but an image like the leaves is a separate gif file). The Insert/Object menu can be used to create things such as Word Art for fancy titles and the Insert/Picture menu can be used for inserting jpg and gif image files (NOTE: be frugal in the insertion of images into web pages, otherwise it might take a significant amount of time for someone connected by modem to view your web page). Once your proto-web page looks about like you want it, save it as HTML by selecting the File/Save-As menu and selecting HTML . It's best to give your web files the extension ".htm" or ".html" to distinguish them from regular files--Word will do this automatically. Note that if you've created a Word Art image (such as the heading at the top of this page), Word will create a .gif file for it at the same time as your html file is created--the name of that gif file will be something like "image1.gif".
You will want to look at your web page in a browser before posting it on the web for everyone to see. You may discover that things get formatted a little bit differently by the browser than what you saw in Word--actually Word does have the capability to preview your page in Netscape or IE without closing the file--look at the File/Web-Page-Preview menu. A helpful hint if you've got graphics on your page is to change your computer screen to 640x480 resolution and then view your page using Netscape or IE. The reason for this is that there are still many people who have low resolution monitors--this will allow you to determine if they can reasonably view your page.
Once you've got your page(s) set up like you want, you will need to ftp them to a server where they'll be available for others to view them. There are three things to be aware of here. First, some ftp programs can't handle long file names, so you may discover that the names have been truncated in the transfer process. Just use the Unix mv command to restore their proper names. Second, your server should designate a certain name as being the first page that someone sees when they type in your URL. That file name is almost always index.html--so be sure that your main index page has that name. Third, in ftp-ing your files, remember that HTML files should be transferred as ASCII whereas graphics files should be transferred as binary.
If you go to the View/HTML-Source menu, you can view and edit the HTML source code for your web page. A button for Exit HTML Source will appear on the toolbar which will allow you to go back to a web-type view of your page.
If you want to print out a copy of these instructions, you may find it useful to go to the File/Page-Setup menu of your browser and set it for printing black text. You may also want to go to the File/Print-Preview menu to see if margins, etc. need to be adjusted.
**Hyperlinks are markers in the text that allow you to move through a document or to another Web document/site by a click of your mouse. There are several simple types of hyperlinks to be aware of.--- The first type is a link to another web site. For instance, you might want to make it so that anyone who clicks on "USM" in your document automatically jumps to the USM home page. The hyperlink reference in this case would be http://www.usm.edu. I have a number of these links on my home page and on the title page of my web presentation.--- A second type of hyperlink allows a person to jump to another file that's part of your home page. For instance, if you have a file called "resume.html" on your web server, you could create a link from your index by using that file name as the hyperlink reference. The "Return to Seminar Page" at the bottom of this page does this.--- If you want someone to be able to use their browser to send you an e-mail, you might highlight your name as a hyperlink and make the hyperlink reference mailto:yourname@yourdomain. I have a mailto link to my e-mail address at the bottom of my main home page and also in my seminar presentation.--- If you want to create hyperlinks that allow a viewer to conveniently jump from paragraph to paragraph in one file, you need to create bookmarks. In Word, put the cursor at the place you want to jump to and then go to the Insert/Bookmark menu and type a name for the bookmark. Then move to the text you want to use as the link to that bookmark (that is, the text you want to click on in order to jump to the bookmarked location). Highlight the text that will serve as the hyperlink and go to the Insert/Hyperlink menu. In the bottom (named link) box type the name of the bookmark you want to jump to when someone clicks that spot (you can also use the browse button and Word will list what bookmarks have been placed in your page already). The turquoise (or green if you've used them), underlined ** in this document are set up as bookmarks that allow you to jump up and down on this page.--- You can also create hyperlinks to telnet and ftp sites by using telnet:// or ftp:// references.
