Guide to Using a Simple Web page editor

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Guide to using a Simple Web Page editor

Introduction

Many of you would like to edit your own web pages, but may not be able to afford some of the expensive web editors like Microsoft FrontPage or Macromedia's Dreamweaver product. What will describe here is a open source tool called 'Composer' which is part of the Mozilla project (the same people that brought you the new Firefox web browser). There are versions for Windows, Linux, and also the Mac!

There is no cost to this item. You will be downloading the Mozilla browser (you don't have to use the web browser), but part of this download will also include the web editor. We will explain how to download the stuff you need and how to create and make simple edits to your site on our web servers.

Download and Install

You will click here to go to the Mozilla web site, search the page until you find a link to the "Mozilla" project (right now a link is on the lower right side of the page). You will then click on the download link for your version. After it downloads you can start the install process.

You can install as much as you like, but if you want just the editor choose the 'custom' install option and uncheck EVERY item, i.e. Mail & Newsgroups, Chatzilla, etc.... You can then proceed, we do NOT recommend you make it a quick launch items unless you are going to be using it often. We do NOT recommend you make it your default browser.

When the install is done you should have a Mozilla Icon on your desktop (It looks like a dinosaur's head). In windows it should be available from your Start menu, under 'All Programs' -> Mozilla.

Editing a Web Page

Okay, we will start with an existing page at your site. Start 'Mozilla', the web browser, and navigate to a page at the site you wish to change. You can see that Mozilla functions as a normal web browser. Once you are on the page you want to edit click on the 'File' menu item and then select 'Edit' .

When you do that another window will pop-up, you are now in Composer. You may notice the page looks a little different as Composer puts borders around different form/table areas. We recommend you experiment with the different Views Composer offers from the 'View' menu:

Normal Edit mode - what you are seeing now.

HTML tags - a lot of fun! You will see the names of the actual tags on the page.

HTML source - you see the raw HTML for the page.

Preview - shows you the page as it would look in a browser.

Go ahead and make changes to the page. We are now ready to save the page to your web site.

Under the 'File' menu select 'Publish as...' -- if you want to just save the page to your local PC you could choose 'Save as...'. When you choose 'Publish as...' a window will pop up. It is CRITICAL you get these settings correct.

For our demo we will assume the following (you would use the information we gave you):

Settings TAB
Server Information
Site name: www.yourcompany.com
Publishing address: ftp://user1.thebook.com/ (It is NOT you web site address)
HTTP address of your home page: http://www.yourcompany.com/test.html
(NOTE - our file was test.html -- you would enter the name of the page you used)

Login Information
Username: example
Password: example
(NOTE - for the above use the ftp username and password we sent you in your site activation instructions. Remember, type them exactly, they are case sensitive.).

Then choose the 'Publish" tag:
You can fill in the Page Title as you desire and also select the Filename and optionally a subdirectory. You can then push the 'Publish' button and your files should be loaded -- you should then check your site with another web browser and see the changes. Make sure you do a "RELOAD", in IE hold down the CTRL key and press F5 to force a reload! If you have any problems with your settings, please contact us for help!

There you go -- you are a webmaster!!!!