Now that you have everything together (text, graphics, general idea of how you want your web site to look like), it is time to create the HTML documents. If you want a web site without learning HTML, there are many free web page services that have site-building tools to help you out. However, if you learn HTML, you will be able to build a better web site.
Learning HTML
Case Western's Introduction to HTML is the best tutorial for learning the basics of HTML in a few short hours. The Bare Bones Guide to HTML is the best HTML quick reference guide on the Internet. It is a concise "cheat sheet" that you can use to look up the correct forms of tags as you are creating web pages. Print out a copy of it and keep it in a handy place.
The good thing about HTML is that almost nothing is a secret. Let's say you come across a web page that does something that you wish you could do. You can learn how to add that particular feature to your web page by looking at the document's source to see how it was done. To do this (in Netscape), click on View in the menu bar. Next, click on Document Source. You can also save the HTML file on your hard drive and experiment with it. This does not mean you can copy a person's HTML code and call it your own.
Learn more about HTML and web site creation by checking out the Advanced HTML section in Further Reading. Also visit Ask Dr. Web. This site has pages and pages of tip about HTML, graphics, multimedia, and content.
HTML Editors
HTML is a pretty simple language, but it is very tedious. I created my first HTML documents using a text editor. This was very time-consuming because I had to type every single HTML tag in. I knew there had to be an easier way.
Eventually, I found it in the form of HTML editors. If you are surfing the Net with Netscape, you can bring up Netscape Composer by clicking on the icon in the bottom right corner of your browser window (provided that you downloaded Netscape Communicator). Unfortunately, unlike Netscape, Internet Explorer does not come packaged with a free HTML editor. Fortunately, AOLPress is a good free editor you can download. Both of these WYSIWYG editors will make creating HTML documents as easy as creating word processing documents.
HTML Converters
HTML Converters convert documents to and from HTML. They are useful if you want to convert a long text document into HTML.