To create your own Web site, you need access to a Web
server. Red Hat automatically installs the Apache Web server on its Linux
systems. You can also rent Web page space on a remote server—a service many ISPs
provide, some for free. On Red Hat systems, the directory set up by your Apache
Web server for your Web site pages is /var/httpd/html. Other
servers provide you with a directory for your home page. Place the Web pages you
create in that directory. You place your home page here. You can make other
subdirectories with their own Web pages to which these can link. Web pages are
not difficult to create. Links from one page to another move users through your
Web site. You can even create links to Web pages or resources on other sites.
Many excellent texts are available on Web page creation and management.
Web pages are created using either HTML intro, the Hypertext Markup
Language, or the newer extended version, XML, the Extended Markup Language. They
are a subset of Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). Creating an HTML or
XML document is a matter of inserting HTML or XML tags in a text file. In this
respect, creating a Web page is as simple as using a tag-based word processor.
You use the HTML tags to format text for display as a Web page. XML tags can
include more detailed information about a particular connection such as object
data or transaction characteristics. The Web page itself is a text file you can
create using any text editor. If you are familiar with tag-based
word processing on Unix systems, you will find it conceptually similar to nroff.
Some HTML tags indicate headings, lists, and paragraphs, as well as links to
reference Web resources.
Instead of manually entering HTML or XML code, you can use Web
page composers. A Web page composer provides a graphical interface for
constructing Web pages. Special Web page creation programs can easily help you
create complex Web pages without ever having to type any HTML tags explicitly.
Remember, though, no matter what tool you use to create your Web page, the Web
page itself will be an HTML document.
