7.5 Creating Your Main Page

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Every web site needs a main page, and your .Mac HomePage is no exception. As mentioned earlier, until you create a Site Menu page, anyone who goes to your .Mac HomePage will be redirected to the lowest -numbered web page in your Sites directory.

To create a main page for your .Mac HomePage, follow these steps:

  1. Go to the .Mac HomePage site (http://www.mac.com/homepage) and log in with your .Mac member name and password

  2. Click on the Site Menu tab in the Create a Page section, and then select one of the four themes to the right; for this example, I've used the Brushed Metal theme. When you select a theme, you will be taken to a page similar to the one shown in Figure 7-13. If you have created any other pages, they will show up in the content area for your site's main page.

    At the upper right of Figure 7-13, you can see three icons: Themes, Preview, and Publish. When clicked, these icons let you change the theme, edit, or publish the current page, respectively. Since this will be the main page, we have some work to do on it before we actually publish the page.

    Figure 7-13. Edit the Site Menu page to welcome your visitors .
    figs/idm_0713.gif

  3. In looking at Figure 7-13, you can see that there are a lot of different text fields that you can edit, and different controls for moving any existing page links around. We'll start by changing a couple of the text fields. At the top, you will see a text field that contains the name of the theme you've chosen (in this case, it says "Brushed Metal Menu"). Change the text in this field to "Home" (no quotes), and then tab down to the next field. The reason you want to name (or consider) this item "Home" is because the top row is a set of links to the various pages of your .Mac HomePage. This row of links will appear on every page of your site. By naming this page "Home," you guarantee that the people who visit your site can quickly find their way back to your Site Menu page.

    The name you assign to your Site Menu page in the link row will also be used in the <title/> tag for the Menu # .html page. Since this will just say "Home," you can go back later and edit the <title/> tag in the HTML file to display the title as something that identifies the site with you; for example, "Chuck's .Mac HomePage." Changing the text in the <title/> tag won't change the text of the link at the top of your site.


  4. In the field that says "Place a title here", type in something that will help people identify this page with you.

  5. Now let's look closely at the contents portion of what could appear on your Site Menu page. In looking at Figure 7-13, you'll see that I have two Photo Album pages and a File Sharing page already waiting for my site. Since I want to change the pictures that will be seen when someone comes to my site, I will click on the Choose buttons on each of these images. When I do, I'm taken to a page (shown in Figure 7-14) that lets me select a different image from that Photo Album's set.

    Figure 7-14. Select a different image to use from the Photo Album on your Site Menu page.
    figs/idm_0714.gif

    To select a different image, simply click on a filename in the middle column, and a thumbnail of the image will appear to the right. When you've found the picture you want to use, click on the Choose button. Repeat this process for each of the images you want to use.

    If you don't want to use an image from one of your Photo Albums, but want something else, just make sure that you've selected a JPEG or GIF image that's saved to your iDisk's Pictures folder. This means that you can create custom icons for any of the pages in your site, upload them to your iDisk's Pictures folder, and then go back and edit your Site Menu page, if you so choose.


  6. Below the content area for your site, you will see two options for adding a counter and an email link to your .Mac site's main page. If you want to keep track of how many people have visited your site, or if you'd like people to be able to email you from it, select the checkboxes next to these items, respectively.

    When you've edited all of the fields, changed pictures, etc., the Site Menu page will look similar to Figure 7-15.

    Figure 7-15. Almost there...
    figs/idm_0715.gif

  7. If you're sure this is how you want your site's main page to look, click on the Preview button to see what the page will look like (shown in Figure 7-16). If you like what you see, click on the Publish button; if not, click on the Edit button and go back and tweak the things you want to change.

    Figure 7-16. Previewing your .Mac HomePage's Site Menu page.
    figs/idm_0716.gif

  8. After you have clicked on the Publish icon, the Menu # .html page will be created and saved to the Sites folder on your iDisk, and you will be greeted with the message shown in Figure 7-17.

    Figure 7-17. With your main page created, there's little work left to be done (or is there?).
    figs/idm_0717.gif

    From here, you can opt to send an iCard to your friends and family to let them know how to access your .Mac HomePage, or you can click on the Return to HomePage link to go back and build more pages for your site. As mentioned earlier, though, you don't have to direct your friends to the URL shown on this page. Instead, you can just direct them to http://homepage.mac.com/ membername (where membername is your .Mac member name).

Rather than sending off a message, click on the Return to HomePage button. When you do, you will see all of the Pages for your .Mac site listed at the left of the page, as shown in Figure 7-18.

Figure 7-18. Pay close attention to the listing of your HomePages (on the left).
figs/idm_0718.gif

As you can see, the listing of Pages shows the "Home" page as last in the list; this is because the Site Menu page was the last one created. Unfortunately, this also means that the Home link will be the last one to appear in the list of links at the top of my .Mac site. Worse yet, any other pages that get added after this page has been created will appear after the Home link. If you have only a few pages, this probably won't matter much, but if you have 20 pages, you're forcing your friends and family to find your Home page by reading through all of the links.

Fortunately, this page is interactive, which means you can drag and drop the names of Pages within that listing. Simply click on the name of your Site Menu page (in this case, mine is Home), and drag it to the top of the list and let go of the mouse button. When you do, the Site Menu page will appear at the top of the list, as shown in Figure 7-19.

Figure 7-19. Now the Site Menu page (named Home) is listed on top.
figs/idm_0719.gif

Now when people go to visit your .Mac HomePage, the Home link appears first in the list, as shown in Figure 7-20.

Figure 7-20. Check out the list of links on the page; Home is listed first on every page for the site.
figs/idm_0720.gif

If you decide later that you want to change the theme for your Site Menu page, simply go back to the .Mac HomePage site (http://www.mac.com/homepage), select the file in the Pages listing, and then click on the Edit button.

Whenever you add a page to your .Mac site, you should consider going back and editing the Site Menu page. That way, you can get the right image you want on your main page.


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Inside .Mac
Inside .Mac
ISBN: 0596005016
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 132
Authors: Chuck Toporek

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