The best way to get your page listed on search engines is to use ISUBMIT.COM. This page will allow you to apply to several of the major search engines on the Internet.
Getting your page listed with specific lists usually requires an e-mail message to the keeper of the list. Look for an e-mail address or submit area on the page in question.
For our basic forms based page you can return to the form by going to church maintenance or ministry maintenance. You will need your ID and password to access your information. Then update the form and click Modify. Similarly for Basic Designer pages, you will follow the above steps but once the form is up you can click on the HTML button to update your page contents. For other types of hosting contact us if you need help.
If you know the ID you can request your access information be sent to the registered e-mail address for the site by going to: Maintenance Menu and filling in the ID field and clicking send.
Otherwise,if you need access to a site, either to modify it or to request that it be deleted, we request that, for security reasons, you send your request from an e-mail address on that site or on church or organizational letterhead via paper mail or fax to our office. Please include as much information about the site as you can if you do not know the ID, otherwise the ID is sufficient.
You can send correspondence to: FAX: 972-624-0959 or Net Ministries 6501 Terrace Drive The Colony, TX 75056
Images can be referenced in your page with the following string embedded into your page:
<IMG SRC="/art/bars/rainbar.gif">
You can copy and paste the above example into your page. The characters to be placed within the quotes above can be found in the art library next to the respective image.
Those using our forms generated pages can use the above method to put images into their commentary sections. Those who are customizing their own pages can put the images anywhere, at their discretion.
You should make sure that the art is public or that you have permission to use it. Please click here to see the reaction of someone whose art was used without permission. Once you have done that you may wish to determine the URL of the art. To help determine that click here.
Then you can add it to your BODY tag or IMG tag but remember that some references are relative to the site on which the art resides. For example, Net Ministries uses the following on its home page: <body background="art/nmbk10.gif" bgcolor=#ffd858>
the "art/nmbk10.gif" is relative to Net Ministries' server. For someone not residing on Net Ministries server they would need to use: <body background="/art/nmbk10.gif" bgcolor=#ffd858>
So, when using art from other sites you must determine what their base URL is and add that to your reference.
Understanding the design and layout of a Web page begins with an understanding of HTML. One excellent primer on HTML can be found at http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/General/Internet/WWW/HTMLPrimer.html. This page can be printed as a handy reference or just included in your bookmarks.
Go back to Questions
To make a link to another page you need the URL of that page. You can get that by finding the page and looking where the browser indicates the current URL. You can usually copy the URL. See your browser help for information.
Once you have the URL you enter the following tag into your page where you want the link.
<A HREF=URL> click here (or other text) </A>
where URL is the URL of the page you wish to link to.
Go back to Questions
Not exactly. Free pages are limited to a single page but you can achieve much of the desired result by using bars, headings and intrapage links.
Bars
Bars and horizontal rules can be used to divide your page into visual sections. Bars are generally long and narrow images. Several can be found in the art library. Horizontal rules are HTML tags. They appear like this: <HR>or <HR size=12>where size is the height in pixels.
Headings
Headings are section titles in larger bold lettering. HTML codes exist for creating headings. These are <H1> This is a Heading</H1>. The two tags denote the beginning and ending of the heading (as is the case with many HTML tags, the ending tag is like the beginning except that it has a "/" in it). The number indicates how large the heading is to be (1 is the largest).
Intrapage links
Intrapage links allow your page's visitors to navigate between sections in your page. This way you can have and index or table of contents at the top with links down into your page and then within your page you can have links back to the index. This would appear as follows:
<A NAME=index>
<A HREF=#sub1>Subject 1</A>|<A HREF=#sub2>Subject 2</A>
|...<A HREF=#subn >Subject N</A>
...
<HR>
<A NAME=sub1><H3>Subject 1</H3>
...
<A HREF=#index>Go to Index</A>
...
<HR>
<A NAME=sub2><H3>Subject 2</H3>
...
<A HREF=#index>Go to Index</A>
...
<HR>
<A NAME=subn><H3>Subject N</H3>
...
<A HREF=#index>Go to Index</A>
...
This example shows how you can combine horizontal rules, headings and intrapage links to create the effect of separate pages within your single page. Try it out, put your subjects in place of the dummies in the example and put your text or other lines where the "..." appear. The explanation of the tags is as follows: <A ...>specifies an anchor. Following the "A " comes "NAME" to specify an anchor point or "HREF" to specify a destination. The anchor points are places in your page to jump to and the anchor destination defines click-able text which cause a jump (the click-able text is delimited by the destination tag and the ending tag "</A>".
In a basic page you select the color from the form.
With BDS you can add a string to your "BODY" tag which specifies the background color. Within the body tag you can add "bgcolor=#rrggbb" where rrggbb specifies the background color. The rr specifies the amount of red, gg the green and, bb the blue. An example of the new body tag would be:
<body bgcolor=#ff0000>.
Unless you have a color photo or paint program and want to spend time experimenting you may want to check-out this site (click) which has many precreated background colors to choose from.
In a basic page you select the pattern from the form.
With BDS you can add a string to your "BODY" tag which specifies the image to use as the background. Within the body tag you can add "background=URL" where URL specifies the location of the background image. Such a URL might be "/art/backgrnd/wvgry.gif". An example of the new body tag would be:
<body background="/art/backgrnd/wvgry.gif">.
Most browsers have a feature called View Document Source (Netscape) or the equivalent, that permit you to see the HTML which created the page. This feature is a great way of learning how things are done with HTML.
You can force a line break by adding the HTML tag <BR> into your text. When the browser encounters the tag it will break the line. To force a blank line you may need two tags in a row like: <BR><BR>.
Thanks to one of our users for the following explanation:
Four characters of the ASCII character set -- the left angle bracket (<), the right angle bracket(>), the ampersand (&) and the double quote (") -- have special meaning within HTML and therefore cannot be used ``as is'' in text. (The angle brackets are used to indicate the beginning and end of HTML tags, and the ampersand is used to indicate the beginning of an escape sequence.)
To use one of these characters in an HTML document, you must enter its escape sequence instead:
< the escape sequence for <
> the escape sequence for >
& the escape sequence for &
" the escape sequence for "
Text styles can be specified by placing a tag at the beginning and end of the text you want in that style. For example: <B>This is Bold</B>will cause that text to appear as This is Bold.
The corresponding tags for underline and italic are <U>underline </U> and <I>italic </I>.
Fonts may be changed with the FONT tag. An example is: <FONT FACE="Arial,Helvetica" > This is the new face</FONT >. The face specifies a list of font names. The Web page visitor's browser uses the first face that it can find which is installed on the browser's system. If none are installed then a default face is used.
Within the IMG tag one can place an ALIGN attribute to specify that the image should appear to the LEFT, RIGHT, or that the text should align with the TOP, MIDDLE, or BOTTOM of the image. An example would look like this:
<IMG SRC="filename.gif" ALIGN=LEFT>. Another tag to know is the BR tag and its CLEAR attribute. When you want be sure that the next text/image will appear below the current one use <BR CLEAR=ALL>. Below are visual examples of each type.
<IMG SRC="/art/cross/cross3.gif" ALIGN=LEFT>This image is aligned LEFT.<BR CLEAR=ALL>
This image is aligned LEFT.
<IMG SRC="/art/cross/cross3.gif" ALIGN=RIGHT>This image is aligned RIGHT.<BR CLEAR=ALL>
<IMG SRC="/art/cross/cross3.gif" ALIGN=TOP>This text is aligned TOP.<BR>
<IMG SRC="/art/cross/cross3.gif" ALIGN=MIDDLE>This text is aligned MIDDLE.<BR>
<IMG SRC="/art/cross/cross3.gif" ALIGN=BOTTOM>This text is aligned BOTTOM.<BR>
The methods for using an HTML editor differ slightly depending on whether you have UDS service, a BDS page, or a forms generated page. Most people going to the effort of using an HTML editor have already decided to customize their page and have therefore chosen UDS service or a BDS page.
If you have UDS service you use FTP to upload the HTML file you have created.
With BDS you open the output file from the HTML editor (ex: file.htm) (in a text editing program or word processor as a text type file if your HTML editor does not show the HTML). Select the entire contents and "copy" the selection to the clipboard (see documentation for procedure but most editors place this function in the edit menu). Then proceed to the normal maintenance process. Go to the maintenance page, select the type of page you are maintaining (church or charity/ministry), enter your ID and password, press submit, on the new page press "Manage you HTML page". Select all the HTML in the editing form and then paste your new page in from the clipboard (see edit menu). Note: an easy way to select the HTML in the form is to place the cursor at the left of the first character, scroll to the bottom of the HTML, then shift+click at the bottom and the entire HTML will be selected.
With a forms generated page you open the output file from the HTML editor (ex: file.htm) (in a text editing program or word processor as a text type file if your HTML editor does not show the HTML). Select the portion of the contents after the body tag " <body....>" and before the end body tag " </body>" and "copy" the selection to the clipboard (see word processor or text editor documentation for procedure but most editors place this function in the edit menu). Go to the maintenance page, select the type of page you are maintaining (church or charity/ministry), enter your ID and password, press submit, on the new page go to the commentary section into which you wish to place the HTML you created. Select all the contents and paste your HTML in from the clipboard (see BDS discussion above for details).
The PRE tag can be used. "PRE" stands for "preformatted". You can get exactly the text you enter to appear on your Web page by bounding the text with <PRE>and </PRE>. For example:
<PRE> This HEADING Has these indents Here And ---- Here! </PRE>Generates:
This HEADING Has these indents Here And ---- Here!
The process is similar to creating links since it requires the "A" or anchor tag. An example is:
<A HREF="mailto:aName@bogus.com">Click to send mail</A>
The result looks like this: Click to send mail
A ''real'' guestbook requires software support on the server. There is no support for guestbook with free pages. One can, however, simulate aspects of a guestbook with a simple mailto: or an elaborate mailto: form.
After reviewing the following material you may decide that you need more that a free site and a packaged solution for your guest book but methods to implement guest books in your free page are provided for your information.
The simple mailto: is described above while the form is described below:
First, here is an example forms based guestbook:---------------------------
And here is the HTML which created it:
<FORM ACTION="mailto:YOURMAIL@BOGUS.COM" METHOD="POST">
<H3>Welcome to my FAQs Guest Book. Please make an entry.</H3>
Please enter your name:
<INPUT NAME="Name" SIZE="30"></INPUT>
</P>
<P>Your organization:
<INPUT NAME="Org" SIZE="45"></INPUT>
</P>
<P>Your E-mail address:
<INPUT NAME="E-mail" SIZE="35"></INPUT>
</P>
<P>Your City, State, and Country:
<INPUT NAME="Address" SIZE="45"></INPUT>
</P>
<P>How did you locate FAQs?
<SELECT NAME="reference" >
<OPTION>Just surfed on in
<OPTION>From Net Ministries home page
<OPTION>From the Church Directory page
<OPTION>Found you on a web search engine
<OPTION>A friend gave me your address
<OPTION>Other
</SELECT>
</P>
What do you think of FAQs?<BR>
<INPUT TYPE="radio" NAME="I_Think" VALUE="great" CHECKED>I think it is great.<BR>
<INPUT TYPE="radio" NAME="I_Think" VALUE="OK" >It is O.K.<BR>
<INPUT TYPE="radio" NAME="I_Think" VALUE="not sure" >I am not sure.<BR>
<P>Please comment here. <TEXTAREA NAME="Comment" COLS="50" ROWS="8">
</TEXTAREA></P>
<P><INPUT TYPE="submit" VALUE="Send"> <INPUT TYPE="Reset"></P>
</FORM>
---------END OF HTML-----------
This HTML will get a CGI ''POST'' string to you. Below we will describe method(s) for decoding the CGI string. First, let's look at the HTML example:
<FORM ACTION="mailto:YOURMAIL@BOGUS.COM" METHOD="POST">
</FORM>
These two lines indicate the start and finish of the form. In the ACTION string you will want to indicate an e-mail address to send the form to. Please do not send them to me by leaving this unchanged. You can leave everything else the way it appears above.
Within the form text type HTML tags behave as you would expect.
<INPUT NAME="Name" SIZE="30"></INPUT>
This INPUT tag specifies a field to receive input and defines its size (in characters). The NAME specifies the name of the data so you will know which fields received which data.
<SELECT NAME="reference" >
</SELECT>
These lines bounds a listbox or a dropdown list. The OPTIONS in the list are defined by OPTION tags as below:
<OPTION>The statement is True
<OPTION>No it isn't
Another form item is a variation of the INPUT tag. It is the RADIO type. With this type you may specify a list of choices of which only one may be choosen, like a radio button. To do this you specify a list of input statments like those above with TYPE="radio". Notice that the variable NAME for all these INPUT tags is set to the same thing (I_Think). This is necessary so that the browser knows which inputs are grouped as one set of radio buttons. A VALUE is specified in each INPUT tag so you will know which button was selected. One of the INPUT tags has a CHECKED attribute specified. This indicates that it is the initial button selected.
To input freeform text you can specify a TEXTAREA like that below:
<TEXTAREA NAME="Comment" COLS="63" ROWS="8">
</TEXTAREA>
This TYPE specifies a freeform text entry box of the dimensions specified in COLS and ROWS.
The final TYPEs are ''submit'' and ''reset''. They create buttons that permit the form user to submit or reset the form contents. See below:
<INPUT TYPE="submit" VALUE="Send"> <INPUT TYPE="Reset">
Note that if you specify a VALUE then the label of the corresponding button is the VALUE specified and if no VALUE is specified then the label is the TYPE, as entered.
Decoding CGI data
Programs exist to decode this data. One such program for Windows can be found HERE.
Another solution for those who use Word is a word macro that you can download by Clicking Here.The Pre-packaged Solution
As you can probably tell by now, the do-it-yourself solution is not easy and brings with it on-going maintenance issues. You may want to visit Guest World
Where you have links on your page add: target="_top"
This will force the destination out of the frame to the top.
For example:
<A target="_top" HREF=http://cnn.com>
To get a button for a map, like:You can add the following HTML code to your page. It will create a button to a map. Please replace the value information for address (AddrStreetLine) and zipcode (AddrCityLine). and you see here with yours (if in the United States.)
<FORM ACTION=http://www.mapsonus.com/bin/maps-map/usr=~new/formName=mapsetaddr METHOD=POST>
<input type=hidden name=AddrStreetLine value="3501 North Josey Lane" >
<input type=hidden name=AddrCityLine value="75007">
<input type=submit value="Click for Map">
</FORM>