A Stroll Through the AutoWebDesigner

Meet the Smiths, an average American family. The Smiths have Internet access and use it frequently -- for email, instant messaging, and shopping -- but they're not technical or artistic geniuses.

This year, the Smiths have decided to start a family website, but they don't want to spend a a long time or a lot of money. This is where the AutoWebDesigner comes in. Using the AutoWebDesigner, the Smiths, without any special skills or expensive software, can easily create a multi-page website right in their browser. Here's how:

1. The Smiths start to organize their website. They decide to start with three pages -- an introduction, a family history, and a recipe for their famous chocolate chip cookies. They register a domain name and find an affordable hosting company. For web design they're going to use the AutoWebDesigner. It's always a good idea to plan ahead and to write out the content they want.

2. Mrs. Smith, the self-appointed family webmaster, signs up for a AutoWebDesigner account and pays for a website. It costs $30, much less than most web designers charge.

3. Mrs. Smith logs in to the AutoWebDesigner with her new account information.

4. Mrs. Smith now chooses how many pages she wants in her family's website. The Smiths have already decided on three pages, so she types in "3."
   
   Mrs. Smith chooses to create a 3-page website.

5. The next screen asks Mrs. Smith to choose file names and templates for her pages. AutoWebDesigner works by creating a website whose pages that are linked together. This means that each web page will have a section of links (clickable text) that point to the other pages in the site. To create these links, Mrs. Smith needs to give each page she creates a file name. These are the file names she will use when she saves her pages. She also needs to provide a very brief description for each page. This description is what visitors to her website will click on to visit the corresponding page.

   Mrs. Smith decides to name her home page index.html and to describe it as "Main." She names the family history page history.html and describes it as "Family history." She names the cookie page recipe.html with the description "Yummy cookie recipe."

6. Next, Mrs. Smith chooses templates for each page. She clicks the "Gallery" link, which opens the template gallery page. The template gallery shows a screenshot of a sample web page made from each template. Mrs. Smith browses through screenshots of sample pages for each template. Since she wants a consistent look for her family's website, she decides to use Template A for all her web pages. She goes back to the main window and selects the option "Template A" in the drop-down menu for each page.
   
   Choosing file names and templates.

7. After Mrs. Smith clicks the "Continue" button, the next screen shows a list of Mrs. Smith's web pages along with a button for each page. Since she likes to do things in consecutive order, Mrs. Smith naturally wants to create her introduction page first. She clicks the "Create this page" button in the first row.
   
   The menu. Click on the "Create this page" button next to a page name to create that page.

8. A window opens that contains the form for creating page 1, the introduction. The screenshot of Template A in the gallery describes the sections Mrs. Smith needs to fill in. Mrs. Smith has already written a draft of the introduction in her word processor. After a final spelling and grammar check, Mrs. Smith cuts and pastes the introduction into the text box labeled "Main Body." She also types a title into the text field labeled "Title". The title is the text that appears on the bar on top of your browser whenever you visit a web page. For example, the title of this page is "A AutoWebDesigner Story."
   
   The page creation form.

9. Mrs. Smith clicks on the "Preview" button. The next screen displays Mrs. Smith's web page, only with an extra box at the bottom. This box indicates that Mrs. Smith is viewing a preview page, not a final savable version. Mrs. Smith notices a spelling error, so she clicks the link in the box that will take her back to the page creation form.

10. After correcting her error, Mrs. Smith clicks the "Preview" button again. This time she likes what she sees, so she clicks the button to create the final version of her web page. The final version is displayed in her browser window. Now she clicks on the File->Save As option in the menu of her browser to save her web page on her computer. She is careful to make sure that the name she uses is the same file name she entered in step 5, index.html. This is important because otherwise, the links in the navigation section will be broken.
    
    
    The completed web page.

11. Mrs. Smith closes the window containing the page she just saved. The window in Step 7 is still open, so she repeats steps 7 - 11 for each page she wants to create.

12. After she has saved all her web pages, Mrs. Smith uploads them onto her hosting provider's server. The hosting service the Smiths chose provides instructions for uploading web pages. Mrs. Smith is careful to keep the file names of the web pages consistent with the names she used when saving the pages on her computer.

That's all for the AutoWebDesigner walk-through. For more details, please check the FAQ when it becomes available for answers to specific questions.