WordPerfect 8 allows you to create simple web pages very easily. You can go to the File/New menu and select one of their pre-designed pages, though I have found this to be of limited utility. Another way to proceed is simply to start out with a document and type in your text. You can also paste in graphics from other programs just as you normally would in creating a term paper, report, etc. To change this document into a proto-web page go to the View/Web-Page menu. In web mode you can create hyperlinks (see ** below) by highlighting the text that will serve as the link button and then go to the Tools/Hyperlink menu (creating hyperlinks can also be done in page view mode). The "Document" box is where you place the relevant URL. (If you're familiar with the concepts, you can use this dialog box to create bookmarks in the text or to specify what frame the link will appear in.) Note also that this dialog box gives you the choice of simply underlining the linking text or placing it in a box. (To get really "fancy", you can place a small graphic on your page, highlight it, and turn it into a hyperlink button.) Under the Format/Font menu you can change how the text appears (font and color can be changed and even blinking text can be made). Under Format/Text-Background-Colors you can change the overall appearance of your page, affecting the text color, 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 what separates the text and return link at the bottom of this page). The Insert/Graphics/Text-Art menu was used to create the title for this page. Once your proto-web page looks about like you want it, save it as HTML either by selecting the File/Save-As menu and selecting HTML as the file type or else by going to File/Internet-Publisher. It's best to give your web files the extension ".htm" or ".html" to distinguish them from regular files. 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 WordPerfect--actually WordPerfect does have the capability to preview your page in Netscape without closing the file--look at the View/View-in-Web-Browser menu (there are also buttons for many of these functions on the toolbar). Note that WordPerfect does have one anomaly in creating web pages--if you save your file from the File/Save menu, the graphics files (mainly .gif files) that it creates of your various graphics, buttons, and backgrounds get placed in the Windows/Temp subdirectory. You'll have to move those files to the subdirectory where you're storing your HTML files. If you use the File/Internet-Publisher menu or the Publish to HTML tool, WordPerfect will ask you where to store the image files, thereby avoiding this problem.

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 may designate a certain name as being the first page that someone sees when they type in your URL. On ocean that file is 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 open your HTML file in WordPerfect as an ASCII file (rather than as HTML) you'll see the HTML coding. If you know how to write advanced commands (such as creating frames) you can add them into the ASCII file. Alternatively, if you've loaded the file into WordPerfect as HTML, you can select the Format/Custom-HTML menu to do this.

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 (or "document" in the WordPerfect Tools/Hyperlink menu) 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 WordPerfect, put the cursor at the place you want to jump to and then go to the Tools/Bookmark/Create menu and type a name for the bookmark. Then move to the text you want to use as the link to that bookmark. Highlight the text that will serve as the hyperlink and go to the Tools/Hyperlink menu. Click on the bookmark tab and then click on the listed bookmark that you created and then click "Ok." The turquoise, 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.