Musician and The Internet

THE MUSICIAN AND THE INTERNET
You and the Internet; The Internet and You
A Jazz Services publication in association with

The Association of British Jazz Musicians

You and the Internet; The Internet and You
By Steve French
A Jazz Services publication in association with

the Association of British Jazz Musicians
© Jazz Services 2003
www.jazzservices.org.uk
Cover photograph by Nicholas Corker
Jazz Services acknowledges the financial assistance of the

Arts Council of England and the Musicians’ Union
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. ABOUT THE AUTHOR 5
2. INTRODUCTION 6
3. A BRIEF GLOSSARY 7
4. Part One: YOU AND THE INTERNET 9
4.1 Origins 9
4.2 Connections 9
4.3 Use 10
5. WHAT YOU NEED 12
5.1 Introduction 12
5.2 Computer Hardware 12
5.3 Computer Software 13
5.4 Internet Service Provider (ISP) 14
6. PURCHASING A COMPUTER 15
6.1 Introduction 15
6.2 Buy a Used Computer 15
6.3 Build Your Own 15
6.4 Go To An Auction 15
6.5 Buy From a Retailer 15
7. SETTING UP YOUR PC 18
7.1 Getting Started 18
7.2 Customising 18
7.3 Some Tips 18
8. PUBLIC COMPUTER ACCESS 20
8.1 Introduction 20
8.2 Libraries and Public Organisations 20
8.3 Cyber cafés 20
8.4 Sharing 21
9. CONNECTING 22
9.1 Bandwidth and Costs 22
9.2 Services 22
9.3 Reliability and Support/Cost 23
9.4 Which ISP? 23
10. USING THE INTERNET 26
10.1 Installation 26
10.2 BROWSING THE INTERNET 26
10.3 ELECTRONIC MAIL 29
11. Part Two: THE INTERNET AND YOU 31
12. SETTING UP A WEB SITE 32
12.1 Introduction 32
12.2 Domains and Addresses 32
12.3 Using a Web Designer 32
12.4 HTML Tools 33
12.5 The Components of HTML 34
12.6 HTML Designing 36
12.7 Attributes 40
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12.8 Advanced HTML Design 41

12.9 HTML Tricks and Tips 43
13. UPLOADING YOUR SITE - FTP 44
14. ADVERTISING YOUR SITE 46
14.1 META Tags 46
14.2 Search Engines 46
14.3 Reciprocal Links 47
14.4 Sponsorship 47
14.5 Emailshots 47
14.6 WebTV 47
14.7 Other Advertising 47
15. GETTING FEEDBACK 48
15.1 Counters 48
15.2 Forms 48
15.3 Forums/Discussion Groups 48
15.4 Log File Analysis 49
16. MARKETING ON THE INTERNET 50
16.1 Writing good copy 50
16.2 Creating an effective website 50
16.3 Selling On-Line 51
16.4 Legal and Copyright Issues 52
16.5 Further reference 53
17. Advanced Links 54
17.1 Browsers 54
17.2 Images and Audio 54
17.3 Editors 54
17.4 Development Tools 54
17.5 Marketing/Ecommerce 55
17.6 Web Site Analysis 55
17.7 Download Sites 55
17.8 Error Checking 55
Appendix: The Jazz Site
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1. ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Steve French has been involved in music as piano player, composer and
performer ever since school and has toured with various bands in the UK and
abroad. Involved with computers for the past twenty years, he designs
databases, designs web sites and sets up computer systems.
He has been involved with Jazz Services for over 15 years and has been
instrumental in the proposal, set-up, design, implementation and administration
of the Jazz Services computer system, database, book design and web site.
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2. INTRODUCTION
Ten years ago it was very hard to find people who had email to communicate
with, and you could search the web largely for the sake of it, looking up weather
reports, sports and other trivia. Individuals and companies were very cautious
about whether to enter the online world, and the costs of doing so were
relatively high.
Now you can use the Internet to find out train times, buy clothes and CDs,
access technical support, download the latest computer drivers, order groceries.
Email correspondence is fast, immediate and you can attach documents,
databases, sound samples and photos. As a result, there is no need for a fax,
you use much less paper, spend less time on the phone and more time deciding
what you want to say. Virtually all companies now have a web presence, and
rapidly increasing numbers of individuals – including musicians – are using the
internet to communicate with each other, promote themselves, air their music,
publicise their band and even perform.
The following is an attempt to provide an introduction to the internet and indicate
ways in which it can be used to help the musician further their aims.
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3. A BRIEF GLOSSARY
Address The location of a web page or URL. Many different addresses
may be at the same physical location – e.g. the ISP Global
Internet store web pages and emails for several clients, all
with different addresses.
(A)DSL (Asynchronous) Digital Subscriber Line – fast always-on
broadband internet access for set rental fee
bandwidth A measurement of the capacity (and therefore the speed) of
cables and devices measured in kbps or mbps.
bit/byte A bit is a single binary number: 0 or 1 (or on/off). Eight bits
equal a byte which together represent more complex
characters.
browser Software which enables you to browse pages from the
internet or off-line pages.
data Information stored on a PC or in storage devices (as
opposed to software or OS).
email Electronic mail which is generally sent to the sender’s ISP
and then routed to the recipient’s ISP where it is stored until
it is collected. Initially only in text format, email can now be
formatted and have word processed and multimedia files
attached.
font Typeface used on computers (e.g. Arial, Verdana).
FTP File Transfer Protocol – used for sending files across the
internet.
Gb Gigabyte – a thousand Mb.
GUI Graphical User Interface: what you see on the screen.
hardware Hardware consists of the PC and any peripherals such as
printers, scanners, modems etc
HDD Hard Disk Drive – a method of storing data, OS and
software on solid disks within a metal casing.
HTML Hypertext Markup Language – a simple code which uses
tags to format text for web pages.
HTTP Hypertext Transfer Protocol – used for accessing web
pages.
hypertext Underlined text on a computer that, when you click on it,
transfers you to another document, another place in the
current document or a web site. Usually, you would click on
a hypertext link to take you to a web site. Web site pages
are written in HTML, and web sites are prefaced by “http://”.
FTP is another way of sending documents on the internet.
ISDN Integrated Services Digital Network – fast dial-up system
with call charges
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ISP Internet Service Provider, a company which allows

subscribers to browse web pages, send and receive email
and host your web pages for others to see.
Kb Kilobytes: a thousand bytes.
Kbps Kilobits per second – a measure of data transfer speed.
Eight kilobits equal a kilobyte.
Mb Megabyte: a thousand kb.
Mbps Megabits per second: 1000kbps. Eight megabits equals a
Mb.
modem External or internal PC device which allows you to connect to
an ISP and consequently the Internet. A modem’s speed is
measured in kbps or mbps.
OS Operating System: software which works with hardware to
make the PC work and provide a GUI, such as Windows,
MAC OS and Linux.
PC Personal Computer. This might be IBM-compatible or an
Apple Macintosh. It might be a desktop machine, a laptop or
other portable machine. Typically, these come with input
devices such as a keyboard and a mouse. In this context,
the machine will need to have a modem which allows you to
send data elsewhere.
pixel The smallest object that combine to form a computer
graphic: the number of pixels per inch of an image is its
resolution.
point Measurement of font size: 40 point text is 1cm high.
RAM Random Access Memory – used when the PC is switched on
to temporarily store programmes and data.
software The generic term for computer programmes which allow you
to do anything from write a letter to doing your accounts to
browsing the internet.
storage Storing the OS, software and data on a HDD, tape, CD-
ROM, floppy disk etc.
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4. Part One: YOU AND THE INTERNET
4.1 Origins
The first major step towards a connected world was when the first cable was
laid across the Atlantic in 1858. Further, more successful, cables were laid,
until now there are more than 186,000 miles of undersea telephone cables. The
second was the 1957 launch by the Soviet Union of Sputnik which led to the
USA’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), responsible for
inaugurating the Internet.
The Internet began during the cold war in 1969. It was developed by the US
Department of Defense's research people in conjunction with military
contractors and universities to explore the possibility of a communication
network that could survive a nuclear attack. It continued simply because they all
found it a very convenient way to communicate. For the first decade of its
existence, the Internet was primarily used for email, to support online discussion
groups, allow access to distant databases, and support file transfer between
government agencies, companies and universities. By the end of 1983 the
protocols current today were in place and the Internet was born. In 1990,
HTML, a hypertext Internet protocol which could communicate graphic
information on the Internet, was introduced. Each individual could create
graphic pages (a Web site), which then became part of a huge, virtual hypertext
network called the World Wide Web (www or Web) and a huge additional
audience was created. Most people use the term "Internet" to refer to the
physical structure of the Net, including client and server computers and the
phone lines that connect everything. They use the term "Web" to refer to the
interconnection of sites and the information that can be accessed when one is
using the Internet.
Links
www.netvalley.com/netvalley/intval.html - fun general history
www.netvalley.com/archives/mirrors/davemarsh-timeline-1.htm - very useful
timeline of internet history
4.2 Connections
The internet consists essentially of a group of large to medium-sized computers
on a worldwide network connected through a variety of means from copper wire
to fibre-optic cable to satellite. Normal copper telephone wires are capable of
carrying data, but are far less efficient than other media. However, for most
people in the UK, internet access is dependent on the copper wiring provided by
BT between their modem and their ISP and as a result can still be relatively
slow.
The diagram below illustrates simply how internet traffic is routed from a home
or office computer to the web. The speed and capacity of the connection
depends on the bandwidth of the connection each step along the way: it can be
the case that the transatlantic fibre optic cable may be the fastest part of the
journey, but the weakest link (e.g. your modem or ISP) reduces the speed
considerably.
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4.3 Use
The internet is the fasting growing communications medium ever. British use is
growing at least 10-15% a month, the highest sustained growth rate in Europe.
The Internet is attracting 10,900 new adult users in Britain every day, according
to research by NOP. 10.6 million adults accessed the Internet at least once
during 1998, a 48 per cent increase compared with 1997 when the figure stood
at just over 7 million. By December 1998, some 6 million people had used the
Internet from home compared with only 3.4 million by December 1997, an
increase of 76 per cent. Web usage increased considerably during the six
months to December 1998, with almost three quarters (73 per cent) of Internet
users saying they had used the World Wide Web (WWW) during the previous
four weeks. This compares with just 60 per cent in the six months to June 1998.
Over a four-week period (millions of people searching for): 1.2m (jobs), 1.9m
(travel info), 2.9m (company info), 1.9m (newspapers), 1.3m (shopping with
4.8m purchases @ £470m).
More recent research indicates the following:
“Taken together, the EU’s three largest economies show a 39% year-on-year
increase in consumer take-up of the Internet and expected rates of adoption
suggest a base of 64 million users by the end of 2001 (31 million in Germany,
21 million in Britain and 12 million in France).” (www.nop.co.uk)
Additionally, OFTEL published these figures in January 2002:
49% UK adults use the Internet in a variety of locations
45% UK homes connected to the Internet
39% Internet homes currently using unmetered packages
2% Internet homes using broadband
96% Internet decision-makers were satisfied with their Internet service
8 hours is the average weekly household time spent online
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(www.oftel.gov.uk/publications/research/2002/q7_internet_res.htm#c2)
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5. WHAT YOU NEED
5.1 Introduction
This section looks at ways you can connect to the internet. Beginning with a
general look at PC hardware and software, we will go on to look at purchasing
or accessing a PC.
5.2 Computer Hardware

The computer or PC is essentially a box which contains circuits and disk drives.
The computer is controlled using input devices (keyboard, mouse) which send
data to output devices (monitor, printer, disk drive). Every time a character
is typed on the keyboard a signal is sent to the computer composed of eight
bits or one byte. This data is then stored in the computer's memory and
usually sent to the monitor where it can be viewed.
PCs have a circuit board - called the motherboard - on which is the Central
Processing Unit (CPU). All the various electronic and peripheral components
of the computer system are co-coordinated by the motherboard, and the CPU
provides the brains to process all the various incoming and outgoing information
(or data). The board also has slots for memory and for other circuit boards used
to control input and output devices.
The memory in a computer is used to store software and data while the
computer is running. When the computer is switched off its memory is erased.
This type of memory is referred to as random access memory (RAM), and the
better the computer, the more RAM it will have. Some software applications
(e.g. desktop publishing) will require a fairly large amount of RAM, whereas PCs
used only for simple word-processing will require very little.
The most common forms of storage are on magnetic disk usually in the form of
a hard disk drive which is a fixed disk fitted inside the machine, and a floppy
disk drive with removable floppy disks. Hard disks can store much more
information than floppy disks, work faster and are generally more reliable.
Unlike RAM, they do not erase when the machine is switched off. Disks can
contain operating systems, software (programmes) and data, and information
can be written to or read from them.
Other forms of storage include digital tape (like cassette tape but coming in a
variety of sizes and thickness), optical disks and CD-R (writeable and re-
writeable CDs). ZIP disks at 100Mb+ per disk have also been popular.
Specifically for the internet, a modem is required, which are typically one of
these types:
! 56kbps modem: can be part of the system motherboard, an internal
PCI card or an external serial or USB device
! ISDN modem or router (internal or external)
! DSL modem or router (usually external)
A number of manufacturers make modems and they come at different speeds,
the latest crop running at a maximum data transfer rate of 56 kilobytes per
second. If you lease an ISDN line, more specialised ISDN modems (or routers)
will give you much faster access. The need for fast transfer rates is illustrated
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by the fact that, with a 56kbps modem, a plain text file (about 2kb) will transfer
in no time; a Word document (about 40kb) about 5 seconds, a small image
(about 250kb) about 40 seconds, and a 3 minute music wave sample (about
30Mb) about an hour.
Currently, Digital Subscriber Lines (DSL) provide the fastest publicly available
access to the internet.
5.3 Computer Software

Operating System
What software you can buy depends on the OPERATING SYSTEM your
machine has: Windows 98/ME/NT/2000/XP, Mac OS, Linux etc. Essentially,
software allows you to organise information and ideas and present them in an
appropriate format. The difference between different software packages is the
type and way data is entered, formatted, outputted and stored.
Word Processor
A word processor is a sophisticated text editor, largely concerned with the
formatting of data, usually text. Unformatted text - such as a basic text file - has
no font style, no bold/italic/underline, no margins, etc. Word processor
software allows you to design documents which include - along with the basic
text itself - codes which format the text to give the document a nice look.
However, with the increased use and conventions of email, formatting is often
overlooked.
Spreadsheet
A spreadsheet is a sophisticated calculator, largely concerned with storing
numeric data, presented on a grid where each number is in a different cell.
Formulas can then be written referencing the cell numbers so that groups of
cells can be summed or counted or subtracted etc. Spreadsheets are
particularly useful for financial data such as cash flows and accounts, or for
analysing and summarising statistical data.
Database
A database is a sophisticated address/order book which stores individual items
of data in fields. Before using a database, you need to decide what field names
you need to cover the data to be stored (such as FirstName, LastName,
Address, Town, Telephone etc.). Each set of data using these fields is known as
a record. You would then design a form by placing these fields on screen
where you can then enter the data. You can also design reports to output this
data as lists, labels, mail merge letters, etc.
Desktop Publishing (DTP), Photo Imaging and Multimedia
Software which allows you to use text, images and sound.
Browsing
Software which allows you to view the Internet.
Contact Management
Software allows you to store contact addresses etc., keep a diary and
send/receive email.
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5.4 Internet Service Provider (ISP)

To complete the chain, an ISP is required. There are many of these, which we
will discuss later. They will lease a line from a telecommunications company
which in turn gives them high bandwidth access to the rest of the
communications network. They need this bandwidth to cope with the traffic
from their subscribers. They will usually host your web site on their server,
direct your email to its destination ISP and store your incoming email on their
server until you collect it.
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6. PURCHASING A COMPUTER
6.1 Introduction
To connect to the internet by purchasing a computer, you will need either to buy
a second hand computer, build your own, go to an auction or buy from a retailer.
We will look at these options here.
6.2 Buy a Used Computer

I would strongly advise against purchasing a second hand computer unless you
want to learn how to get into the guts of the machine to deal with worn out parts
etc. Having said that, computers that cost £1000 two years ago can be picked
up for as little as £250. I would recommend investigating office clearance
companies for these. Alternatively you can try the usual sources such as your
local paper, Loot and PC Exchange magazine (like Exchange & Mart). You are,
however, unlikely to get technical support if anything goes wrong.
Link
www.europc.co.uk/cgi-bin/web.storefront - europc used and reconditioned
computers
6.3 Build Your Own

This can prove to be the best value option, but you definitely will need to
understand in a fair amount of depth the way the boxes are put together. If you
follow this route, the best value parts are to be found at computer fairs which
tend to be advertised in local press publications and on lampposts. I regularly
go to Crystal Palace Sports Centre (every other Sunday) where hardware can
cost less than half the price than in the shops. You will need to do some
research beforehand to ensure that the components you buy will work together.
Links
www.britishcomputerfairs.com/ - British Computer Fairs
www.pcmech.com/byopc/index.htm - how to build your own computer
6.4 Go To An Auction
Computer Auction details are usually found in the local press, and you can get
some amazing bargains. They usually have last year’s machines (or older), but
the specifications are fine for reasonable use. It might be a good idea to go with
someone who knows what is worth going for.
Link
www.lre.co.uk/auction/default.asp - Logical Reclaim Auction
6.5 Buy From a Retailer

What hardware can you afford?
There are such a range of companies offering computers at knock-down prices
at the moment, that it is better to decide beforehand what you can realistically
afford and then see what fits the bill. A budget of £1000 to include a monitor
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and small printer is realistic. If, however, you need a computer for more than
just word processing and the internet - e.g. if you want to compose music or
work with complex graphics - you will need more than just an “entry level”
machine and should expect to pay £1500+. I would recommend the following
specifications:
ECONOMY MID-PRICE HIGH SPEC

Processor 1Ghz 1.5Ghz 2Ghz+
Hard Disk 40Mb 60Mb 80Mb+
Memory (RAM) 128Mb 256Mb 256Mb+
Graphics 32Mb onboard 64Mb card 64Mb+ card +
TV out etc.
Monitor 17” CRT 15” LCD/TFT 17” LCD/TFT
CD/DVD DVD Player DVD Player/CD DVDR plus CD-
Rewriter ROM
Printer Inkjet Laser Laser + Inkjet
Modem 56k ISDN ADSL
Scanner None Mid-price Professional
scanner scanner
I would always suggest getting a tower system which can go on the floor rather
than a desktop system which can clutter up your desk. Additionally, further
hardware will be required if you have music or graphics needs (e.g. sound
mixer, midi USB equipment, scanner, camera etc.).
Which software do you need?
Most computer packages include some software, and it will save money later on
if you at least get an integrated package such as Microsoft Office or Lotus
SmartSuite which include word processor, spreadsheet and contact
management software. You will also need email and web browsing software
(such as Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator), but these either
come free with the operating system (such as Windows XP) or can be obtained
from CDs given away free with computer magazines. As before, however, if you
wish to compose music or design complex graphics you will need to put aside at
least £200-£400 for each additional application. If you purchase these with your
system, however, you should get a reasonable discount. You’ll love some
things that come free and wonder why other things aren’t included.
Do you want to rent?
Although renting PCs is usually a corporate activity, there are companies who
will provide rental machines to consumers. An advantage is that you can make
sure you keep up-to-date with the latest machines; however, to move from one
rental machine to another can prove an arduous business.
Link
www.dme.co.uk/rentapc/home.htm - Rent A PC Ltd
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What level of support do you require?

Support divides into two areas: software and hardware. On the operating
system software side (e.g. Windows XP), it is now more often the system
manufacturer who provide help, but with other software you usually get about
three months of free help from the company who created it.
Who do you buy it from?
Level of support and who you buy from are therefore key factors when
purchasing hardware. You tend to get what you pay for. Companies such as
Compaq and Dell for example sell machines which cost a bit more than others.
However, such companies’ machines are often better tested, more reliable, and
come with better after-sales service. Be aware of the phrases “1 year on-site”
and “1 year back to base” guarantees. Go for on site if you can (and make sure
it means your site, not theirs!). It might be a good idea to study the form
beforehand by purchasing a magazine such as PC Pro which runs regular
comparative reviews of systems rather than putting yourself at the mercy of PC
World. You may have to be patient: on well put together systems there may be
a wait of up to 3 weeks. If you’re in a rush, however, PC World could be your
place.
Links
www.simply.co.uk/ - Simply Computers
www.pcworld.co.uk/ - PC World (the PC arm of Dixons)
www.euro.dell.com/countries/uk/enu/gen/default.htm - Dell
Always try and purchase the software you need from your PC supplier along
with your hardware as they will usually give you a reasonable discount.
However, if you purchase software separately, do not buy direct from the
manufacturer as better deals are usually available elsewhere, especially
amongst the online companies.
Links
www.amazon.com - Amazon
www.jungle.com - Jungle
www.simply.co.uk - Simply Computers
www.inmac.co.uk - inmac
www.dabs.com - DABS
www.misco.co.uk - Misco
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7. SETTING UP YOUR PC
This may sound dull or obvious, but care taken at this stage can save you a lot
of grief later on. When your PC is delivered, make sure the number of boxes
listed on the delivery note are all there before the courier goes. If not, get him to
check his van, and then phone the dispatch company whilst he’s still there.
Unpack the contents carefully, spread them out on the floor, and check each
item against your order, looking for any damage. Generally, the PC box will be
packaged with keyboard/mouse/cables/ manuals and operating system
software, there will be a box containing a monitor and a further box containing
additional software and/or a printer. Phone the supplier immediately if there’s
anything missing. Put all the bits of paper, books and software in separate piles
and immediately fill in warranty cards and make a note of all relevant serial
numbers in your diary. Be especially careful to note the operating system
serial number, your customer number and machine model.
Situate your PC near a telephone line (you may need to buy an extension with a
two-way plug for modem/phone) where the monitor is at a comfortable height
not facing a window. The PC box can go on the floor if the leads reach as long
as you can get at the CD and floppy disk. Follow the manufacturer’s
instructions for attaching the cables. Get a sensible chair to avoid backache
(£60 from an office clearance place). Don’t tidy away your hardware and cables
until you’re sure it all works (about 2 weeks).
7.1 Getting Started

Because CDs are so cheap and the cost of printing so prohibitive, computer
manuals are becoming a thing of the past (i.e. they are not supplied). However,
CD tutorials, help menus and internet help are so good now that you can get by
without them. Your operating system should be pre-installed, so begin by
running any available tutorials on this which should include mouse operations,
system settings and “desktop” layout (desktop means the way things look on
screen when you start work). Once you have got to grips with this, graduate on
to tutorials available with the software you have been supplied. If your other
software hasn’t been installed, the installation process should begin as soon as
you insert the CD in the CD drive.
7.2 Customising
There are almost limitless ways in which you can customise your desktop, your
software in terms of what you see on screen, how files are saved, how buttons
work, how you get at applications and so on. The key here is to experiment: as
long as you maintain a regime of backing up your data (i.e. storing your files on
external media such as floppy disks or CD), the very worst that can happen is
that you have to re-install your software. Don’t be afraid to be bold nor to spend
time playing at this stage.
7.3 Some Tips

Don’t sit in front of your PC for too long
This is advice I should take. I find that if I’m looking at the screen an hour
before I go to bed, I can’t sleep. And after a long day on the machine I can
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become extremely irritable. So take regular breaks, don’t eat while you’re
working.
Get help
Use any help you can get, from the help menus available with programmes,
tutorials, literature, help lines, internet help, friends.
Be simple
Don’t run before you can walk. Get used to writing letters before you take on
designing a multimedia presentation in three languages with a live internet link-
up to Botswana.
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8. PUBLIC COMPUTER ACCESS
8.1 Introduction
You may not have the money to buy your own computer, or you may feel it is
not worthwhile as you can use the web, email and set up your own web site
using a public PC.
8.2 Libraries and Public Organisations

It is increasingly possible to gain access to the Internet by going to your local
library, a public organisation or a cyber café. However, it is unlikely you will be
able to receive email or create a web site. For libraries, phone your local
council to find the nearest one. They might also be able to help on public
organisations.
Link
dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/square/ac940/ukpublib.html - the UK public libraries
page
8.3 Cyber cafés

You may well find this is the easiest method of getting on the internet.
However, the huge growth in cyber cafés and international call centres makes it
difficult to provide a list here, but nonetheless here are some examples of cyber
cafés (which may or may not be currently running) - look in Yellow Pages in
your area for more:
Birmingham: Cafe Surf. The Arcadian Centre, Hurst Street. Bristol:
NetGates Café. 51 Broad Street. Bury St Edmunds: Garland Street Cafe Tel
01284 753373. Cardiff: Grassroots Cybercafé for the Young, Unemployed only
16-25. 58 Charles Street; The Cardiff CyberCafe. 9 Duke Street. Ealing:
CYBERIA. Contact Peter Kennedy 0181 8403131. Edinburgh: WEB13. 13
Bread St; ElectricFROG Internet Café. 42-44 Cockburn Street. Glasgow:
Internet Business Centres Limited. 569 Sauchiehall Street and 239 North Street.
Great Yarmouth: Cybercafé. 145A King St. Isle of Lewis: Captions Internet
Café. 27 Church Street, Stornaway. Jersey - St Helier: The Mighty Mouse
Internet Cafe. 57 New Street. London N3: Microplay Video Games. 165
Ballards Lane. London W1: Network City. 72-73 Marylebone High St;
Cyberia. 39 Whitfield Street. Manchester: Cyberia. 12 Oxford Street; Kaleida.
Unit 147, Upper Market, Manchester Arndale Centre. Newcastle-Upon-Tyne:
Orbit 3 Internet Café. Queens Square. Nottingham: Cyberpub. 5 Victoria
Centre, 21 Lower Parliament Street. Peak District: Peak Art Cyber Cafe.
peak@artcybercafe.cityscape.co.uk. Preston: CyberCentre Preston. 16 Moor
Lane. Taunton: Taunton Cyber -The Corner House, 2 7 North Street.
Warrington: Talk-101. 101 Buttermarket Street. Weston-Super-Mare:
Cybercity. 26 Meadow Street. Wolverhampton: The Molineux CyberBar.
Waterloo Road.
Links
http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Internet/Cybercafes/United_Kingdo
m/ - Google Cybercafe UK listing
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www.cybercafes.com/ - UK and World cybercafes
8.4 Sharing
Sharing a computer can be a good solution for those unable to fork out for the
whole thing, and since many ISPs offer multiple mail boxes, you could still have
your own personal email address. Recent tax breaks from the government may
allow you or your partner to purchase cheaply from their employer, or you could
club together with members of your band to buy one.
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9. CONNECTING
9.1 Bandwidth and Costs

The quality and cost of an internet connection are, not surprisingly, closely
connected. Broadly, these are the types of domestic service offered:
Type Speed Approximate Cost

56k Modem Up to 56 kbps, Local call charges, normal line rental.
Dial-Up but realistically Can’t use telephone at the same time.
about 20kbps
56k Modem (as above) Subscription fee to cover cost of calls
Dial-Up (sometimes between certain hours or
with free a limit of total hours per month),
calls normal line rental. Can’t use
telephone at the same time.
64k ISDN Up to 64kbps Installation Fee. Local call charges
plus higher rental costs. Can use
telephone at the same time if second
ISDN line is used at extra cost.
128k+ 128k + Installation Fee. Subscription fee to
ADSL cover cost of all calls. Can use
telephone at the same time. Not
available in all areas.
ISDN is rapidly being dropped in favour of ADSL as ADSL prices drop. At the
time of writing, ADSL has come down to £30 per month, and home install kits
will reduce the initial costs.
The bottom line in the quality of service of an Internet Service Provider (ISP) is
the bandwidth they offer and amount of traffic in and out of their servers. This is
down to the bandwidth of the leased line they purchased. A good ISP will
purchase more bandwidth when they need it, a bad one will try and make do
and rake in the cash. A good ISP will have a back-up server in case one “goes
down”. I’ve been in many situations where I’ve been unable to deal with email,
thought it was my fault, phoned the ISP who says that their server “is being
upgraded” (which actually means it’s fallen down and they haven’t got a back-
up). Amongst other reasons, It is worth purchasing Internet magazine who
publish performance tables of ISPs. These can change radically over time.
9.2 Services
There are various levels of services that can accompany ISP packages from
simple free dial-up accounts to reseller accounts which allow you to register and
manage domains, email addresses and web sites.
You may only need one email address which you will get anyway, but find an
ISP who offers more if your partner or budgie want personal mail. You should
get some personal web space to put up a site, and you need less than you
think: 2Mb is more than enough to start with. However, some ISPs allow you to
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do more with your site than others: you may need a business account if you
want serious feedback or commerce on your site. Most support CGI scripts and
some support databasing and server side image maps.
Software is no longer such an important issue, since you can get mountains of
free internet software for nothing. However, you may want to purchase a
specialised email programme such as Eudora or Outlook rather than using the
one that comes with the ISP’s package.
9.3 Reliability and Support/Cost

These two are now closely linked following the move of many ISPs to offer free
email and internet services. Free ISPs do not usually offer a helpline: help can
cost you up to £1 a minute or £70 a year. They may, however, be just as
reliable as any other ISP. ISPs who cost, however, are likely to offer a much
broader range of services, especially is you want to run a business on the net.
9.4 Which ISP?

It would be foolish to recommend particular companies, and better to suggest
that you decide beforehand how much you can afford and what you want to be
able to do and then find a suitable package. To help you, consider these
questions:
! Do I want to pay a subscription with no call charges?
SUBSCRIPTION DIAL-UP or ADSL
! Do I need separate lines for internet and phone? ISDN or ADSL
! Do I just need to send/receive email and maintain a small web site?
FREE DIAL-UP
! Do I need an “always on” connection with separate phone? ADSL
! Do I need a Reseller account to manage? ADSL and a RESELLER
package
ISP Dial-Up Examples
The idea that you get what you pay for - which is largely true of hardware - is
somewhat blurred when it comes to ISPs. You might get a free ISP which does
all you need for life fairly badly for nothing, and you may get an expensive one
that doesn’t know the time of day (e.g. BT three years ago). Many of the most
experienced ISPs in the business have changed tack and, whilst charging for
their services, provide additional services to their customers. You may like this,
or you may find you don’t want the services they push at you.
Here are some examples of basic deals available (prices quoted per month):
Freeserve
Contact: freeserve.com/0870 8720099
Packages: Anytime (£13.99 plus BT charges) and Broadband (£29.99), both
with unlimited family email addresses and 30Mb of web space.
Virgin
Contact: virgin.net
Packages: 24seven (£13.49 plus BT charges), Pay As You Go (Low call rates),
both with 5 email addresses and 10Mb of web space.
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BT
Contact: bt.com
Packages: bewildering, with a number of options allied to your home or
business account set-up. For example, btopenworld.com offer ADSL internet
for £29.99 per month (with increasingly cheaper connection charges), and
AnyTime for £15.99 per month (plus 50Mb web space and 10 email addresses).
With the former, you get a second line for phone calls, charged normally.
Charges, subscriptions, installation and extras seem to change monthly, so you
have to shop around. Other services (such as Claranet, MSN etc.) are worth
looking at.
Additionally, you may want to consider an email account that allows you to pick
up email anywhere in the world, and for this hotmail
(http://lc2.law5.hotmail.passport.com/cgi-bin/login) is a very good bet. However,
with an ordinary dial-up, you can use Web2Mail.com to view your mail with any
account, as long as you have your username and password on you.
IMPORTANT TIP: When you get an ISP, make sure you know their support
number, phone BT and add this number as well as your modem number to your
friends and family numbers, perhaps as Best Friend. In fact, create a dedicated
folder to numbers, URLs, usernames and passwords as you go along.
ISDN and ADSL
ISDN can no longer be sensibly recommended, particularly for consumers, due
to the increasing coverage of DSL systems and the relative cost. However, if
you live in an area not covered by DSL and need a faster connection, you
should consider it (www.bt.com/homehighway/ - BT Home Highway).
Costing around the same, DSL is the best option for fast internet services,
particularly since installation and subscription (currently around £30 per month)
are coming down in price. Apart from those mentioned above, the service is
available from NTL (www.ntl.co.uk), Telewest (www.telewest.co.uk) and others.
Check these sites first to see which company covers your postcode area.
Domain Support ISPs
Remember that if you want your own domain, you will need an ISP who will
support your domain. Some ISPs claim to, and you then discover that you’re
forced to tack on an irritating extra bit to your address (e.g.
www.joe.bloggs.demon.co.uk or www.joebloggs.co.uk/joebloggs). You may
need to register a domain name first with a recognised domain name provider
and then inform your ISP, or choose an ISP who can register a domain for you.
You can expect to pay £5-£20 per year for a domain. Ask your prospective ISP
if they register domains and how much they charge, or register separately and
then transfer them through companies such as:
www.ukreg.com, www.simplynames.co.uk,
http://sc.newnet.co.uk, www.totaldomains.net/,
www.domainsnet.com or www.1stnames.co.uk .
Reseller ISPs
If you’re planning several web sites, setting up in business designing other
people’s web sites or wanting to offer people email and internet services, you
should consider a reseller ISP. They will host all your domains for a yearly
subscription, provide a large amount of web space (possibly unlimited) and
Page 24
endless email addresses. They are likely to offer domain name registration as
part of their service.
Companies offering reseller services can be found in trade publications, but one
to look at is fasthosts.co.uk.
Summary
If your web surfing, web site and email requirements are relatively modest, go
for a cheap low call cost option with no frills, using a modem.
If you want high quality web access and some frills, go for ADSL.
If you think your internet use will be heavy and are considering hosting several
sites with your own domain names – possibly selling web space yourself – get
an ADSL package and a reseller account. This may involve two companies, so
you will need to make sure all your mail is routed to the address you have
configured in your email package.
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10. USING THE INTERNET
10.1 Installation
Installing a modem
If you purchased a complete PC system, the modem should be up and running
already. If you’re adding a modem to your system, you should go for the fastest
available as this will save you money in the long run through faster access
therefore cheaper phone bills. An internal modem is trickier to set up (you have
to remove the computer case and plug it into the main board) but doesn’t clutter
up the desk. An external modem can, however, be easily transplanted. The
modem will come with the appropriate drivers to set it up. If the modem doesn’t
work, the most likely reason is that it has an IRQ (Interrupt Request) clash with
another device on your system. Consult your modem manual or supplier on
how to change this setting. Many new computers are supplied with modems
built into the main system board (motherboard). I would recommend a USB
modem as they tend to be quite small and don’t suffer from IRQ problems.
Installing Dial-Up Networking
Dial-Up Networking allows you to use internet services and should already be
installed. If not, you need to access your operating system settings and have
your installation CD ready. If your ISP provided you with its own set-up
software, you simply need to run that to connect. Otherwise, there are various
settings that need to be made in dial-up networking which will be described in
your ISP documentation. Generally, you will need to know your email address,
password, your ISP’s primary and secondary domain name server numbers (in
the form 123.123.123.123) and their mail server address. You may well have
recourse to reinstall dial-up networking, so keep a note of all these settings
alongside your computer documentation.
10.2 BROWSING THE INTERNET

Browser Hardware
The only hardware I have found useful with browsing is a mouse which has a
wheel and additional left/right buttons at the sides (such as the Microsoft Optical
mouse): once you get used to it, it makes it very easy to go forward and back
between pages, and scroll quickly up and down the page.
Browser Software
Browsing software is used to make it easy for you to search for and view web
pages, the best known of which is Microsoft Internet Explorer which comes
bundled with Windows, but there are many free browsers available, the other
best known ones being Netscape Navigator and Opera. These are available on
CDs given away with computer magazines such as Internet magazine, and also
from the web sites at microsoft.com and netscape.com.
Whatever browser you use, the principals are largely the same. You’ll find that
you’ll mostly use the address bar (where you enter the address, such as
www.bbc.co.uk), the forward and back buttons, to your Favourites or to the
Options or Preferences (usually under Tools). Browsers tend not be too
Page 26
memory hungry, so you can have several copies of a browser open at the same
time with different sites accessed.
You'll find yourself returning to certain sites time and again (such as in the
example above), and you may wish to select one as your default site in Options
(I have www.google.com as my default because it seems to find what I want
more than the others). With a fast connection, you may decide to have an
online radio station or news service running whilst you browse other sites.
Fast Browsing Tips
! Depending on your type of connection, remember that browsing can
be faster in the morning because they’re asleep in the US.
! You can considerably speed up browsing by changing the browser
options and turning off things like Java, Sound, Video and Pictures.
! Don’t have other software running at the same time, including screen
savers.
Searching
A search engine is a database which contains an index of web pages, usually
worldwide. A number of companies, such as Google, AltaVista, Lycos and
InfoSeek have computers with huge amounts of storage capacity which enable
them to index web pages by title, key words and, increasingly, subject area.
They usually have what are called “web crawlers” which search the net 24 hours
a day for new stuff. They gain their income by advertising.
Your ISP may provide easy gateways into general information sites through
their main page, and for specific companies you can often reach them by simply
typing in their name (e.g. “Woolworths”) in the address box of your browser. To
search for key words, you should go to sites such as google.com, altavista.com
or lycos.com which provide search engines where you can key in the word or
words you are looking for and it will come up with a number of sites to suit your
needs. Precision is the key here, since typing in words such as “jazz” will give
you over 2,500,000 options. After a time, however, you will find that word of
Page 27
mouth, magazine reviews and links from other sites will allow you to build a set
of links for all the areas you are interested in. A site such as Jazz Services, for
example, has over 2000 general links to choose from.
Search Tips
! Use more search words to narrow down the search
! Try and use unambiguous words
! Make use of the search engine’s advanced features
! You can add a word preceded by a minus (-) character to exclude
pages using that word
! If possible, choose a search engine that suits your needs
! You can add bookmarks to your favourite sites, and a History of sites
visited is also available.
Search Engines
Alta Vista uk.altavista.com
Google www.google.com
Hotbot www.hotbot.com
Lycos www.lycos.com
Scoot www.scoot.co.uk
Search UK www.searchuk.co.uk
UK Plus www.ukplus.co.uk
Yahoo uk.yahoo.com
Yellow Pages www.yell.co.uk
Also, look at www.powersearch.com or www.metasearch.com who will query

several search engines at once for you.
Browsing Tips
Remove unnecessary elements from your browser window. If there’s a page
you go to most often, make that the default page when you go online. If the
address is of the form “www.budgie.com/”, just type Alt + D to go to the address
bar, type “budgie” and press the Ctrl + Enter keys. To go back a page, type Ctrl
+ Left Arrow, forward Ctrl + Right Arrow. If you want to keep the current window
when going to a new one, right click the link and select Open in New Window. If
you right click a link, you can also add this link to your Favourites to view later.
Organise your Favourites and Bookmarks in logical folders. Make sure your
browser options turn off your connection after a set amount of time (e.g. 20
minutes). Install a cache sentry to manage what is stored on your computer
(you can find one at www.mindspring.com/~dpoch/enigmatic/). Work offline to
view loaded pages.
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10.3 ELECTRONIC MAIL

A typical electronic mail programme will look much like Outlook Express which
comes free with Windows, and unless you also require contact management
and calendar functions, this is as good as any. Any incoming mail will appear in
your “Inbox” folder, mail you are sending in your “Outbox” folder and mail you
have sent in your “Sent Items” folder. You can add folders of your own to store
mail in under whatever categories you choose, just as you would do with word
processed documents. An email programme typically has an address book
where you can store your email addresses. To the right you can see the
contents of the chosen folder above, and below that the contents of the chosen
message below. If you receive a message you want to reply to, you can click on
reply and type your new message, which than then be sent with a copy of the
original message. If you receive a message you want to pass on, you can
forward it to someone else.
Composing a Message
Here is a mail message at the composition stage:
Being a reply to an email, the body of the message contains a copy of the
original email. The email is being sent to two different addresses - as you can
see these are separated by a semi-colon. With this email software, you can
also click on a paper clip button and then choose the file(s) you want to attach
from somewhere on your computer. You can attach any files you like as long as
the person receiving them has the appropriate software to read the file - be
careful that they have the same version (or newer) of the software you have
used to create the file. Many ISPs put a limit on the size of files you can email
which tends to be around 1 megabyte.
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Some Email Tips

! You don’t have to be online to read and compose email. Save phone
bills by only connecting when you want to send and receive mail.
! Make sure your email software doesn’t automatically connect when
you open it.
! Send and receive mail at off-peak times.
! Use the address book facility - it makes it easier to find people and
send stuff to them
! Create a signature file so people know who you are every time you
send something
! When you are looking for mail, change the sort order by clicking on
the column headings to sort by sender, subject or date
! Create sets of folders in which to put your mail
! If you don’t know somebody’s email address, you might find them
listed at www.bigfoot.com or www.whowhere.com
General Reading
The Internet by The Rough Guide people at around £5.00.
Internet magazine – available monthly at around £3.
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11. Part Two: THE INTERNET AND YOU

In the first part of this presentation we looked at how to get connected. The
second part will look at the reciprocal relationship you can have with the
Internet by contributing to it and - with luck - making yourself known and even
selling your wares.
We will look at what addresses and domains are, how to set up a web site, how
to advertise your site and how to sell on the internet.
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12. SETTING UP A WEB SITE
12.1 Introduction
Unless you are employing outside help, you will need to get to grips with the
basics of
! Domains – the unique location of your web site and the means to
contact your domain address on the web and by email
! HTML – the language of the web
! FTP – the means by which your web page designs are transferred to
the web
You will have set up your computer and connected using an ISP, perhaps
having used the help in the first part of this book.
12.2 Domains and Addresses

A domain is a unique number (usually expressed as text) assigned to an
individual or company on the internet such as jazzservices.org.uk or
microsoft.com. The domain name forms part of internet and email addresses.
The characters after the dots tell you the type of organisation: “.org.uk” denotes
a non-profit organisation or charity, “.com” or “.co.uk” a commercial
organisation, “.net” an internet services company, “.edu”/”.sch”/”.ac” a
university/school/college, and so on. Countries are often denoted (except the
USA) by, for example, .uk for Britain, .jp for Japan, .de for Germany and so on.
Recently, personal domain suffixes have been added: .me.uk and .name.
Remember that if you want your own domain, you will need an ISP who will
support your domain. You may need to register a domain name first with a
recognised domain name provider and then inform your ISP, or choose an ISP
who can register a domain for you. You can expect to pay £10-£30 per year for
a domain, though these costs are still going down.
Once you have registered a domain, as long as your ISP maintains the yearly
subscription fee, it is yours for life: even if your ISP goes bust, you can simply
transfer your domain to another ISP. If, however, you are given a domain (such
as www.joebloggsbigband.demon.co.uk) , this is fine as long as Demon are
around, but if they go bust you would have to change domain name and re-do
all your marketing links. So make sure you register a domain! I would suggest
going for a .co.uk or a .com (e.g. www.theotravis.com, www.stevefrench.co.uk).
An address – as the name suggests – describes a location. This will include
the domain. In this context, this could be one of two things:
! the address of a web site (such as www.jazzservices.org.uk) or web
page (such as www.musiciansunion.org.uk/regions/south.htm);
! an email address (such as bob@virgin.net).
As mentioned before, “www” stands for World Wide Web.
12.3 Using a Web Designer

If you are considering using a web designer, you have to balance two things:
! whether you can afford it
Page 32
! whether you have the time or inclination to do it yourself

You can pay anything up to £500 per day for a designer, or you may know
someone who would like the challenge of doing your site for a few beers. The
Web and Internet magazines are littered with people offering their services, but
you’re better off being recommended someone. If you do it yourself, you will
need time to learn the ropes, a degree of design ability and a lot of patience, but
having said that it isn’t as difficult as you may imagine. If you deal with a web
designer and have a limited budget, insist on paper or by contract that your new
site will work, is self-contained, updateable and doesn’t require extra
expenditure by you: many people I know have had web designers turn round
and say that the budget has all been spent on a site that doesn’t work properly,
and need more money to finish it properly.
12.4 HTML Tools

You will need to have a reasonable grasp of file structure to design a web site.
You should create two folders on your computer (I would suggest within My
Documents) named WebSite (to store your actual finished web pages) and
WebSiteAdmin (to store work in progress, images, notes etc.). Your WebSite
folder should contain a number of sub-folders, each one relating to a different
area of your site, and you might also create folders for common elements (e.g.
logos, images etc.). If you spend some time thinking about the structure of the
site and reflect this structure in the way you create these folders, you will save a
lot of time later on and you will find it easier to track down broken links and other
faulty areas of the site. When designing the site, begin one page at a time and
follow through the whole process to seeing your first page on the web before
you go any further: this will give you confidence and help you to understand how
it all works early on.
Web Design Software
The first thing to say is that you don’t need to buy purpose built software. In
fact, you’ll find it very hard to keep tabs on your site if you don’t understand at
least the basics of raw web design. Basic web design is not difficult, and all you
need is a text editor and a starting point (this document, some helpful web sites
and maybe a basic book on Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)).
However, if you do want to design your site using web design software, there
are a number of web design packages available that will greatly assist you such
as HotMetal, PageMill (www.adobe.com) and FrontPage (www.microsoft.com).
Highly recommended is Homesite (from www.allaire.com) and - for more
advanced work - Dreamweaver (from www.macromedia.com). Additionally,
many programmes such as Word, Excel, Pagemaker etc. now offer the facility
to save work as a web page. I mostly use text files, but I often use shareware
Coffee Cup software (www.coffeecup.com) - which I ended up buying. Word on
the street has it that Macromedia’s Home Site 5 is the best of the bunch at the
moment (www.macromedia.co.uk). You’ll find that a lot of these packages will
put in a whole load of unnecessary code into your documents that make them
hard to edit and increase download time.
In my experience, even with the help of such programmes, you will still need to
understand the basics of HTML if you are to design your own pages.
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12.5 The Components of HTML

Although it sounds a bit daunting, Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is not a
difficult language to learn. In fact it is less a language and more a series of
“tags” which can either format text or link to another page. Anyone familiar with
the old DOS programme Wordperfect will have used this kind of language when
working with Reveal Codes.
HTML documents are composed only of text, and are best composed in a basic
text editor (such as Notepad - which comes with Windows). Remember that,
just as you can deal with email offline, you compose web pages offline too
without the need of an ISP.
HTML Format
You must overcome the fear of computer languages when using HTML - it is not
as frightening as it may sound. If you use a word-processing programme (such
as Word), the formatting of text (i.e. bold, italic, line spacing, bullet points, etc.)
is integral to the document and the software, and you don’t get to see the
commands that turn such features on or off. This is why you can’t read a Word
document directly by any other word-processing software – it has to be imported
(i.e. translated) first, because the underlying code is different. HTML, however,
is a text only language, and therefore can be immediately read by any simple
text editor on any platform. It is only when it is rendered by different browsers
that the appearance of an HTML document might change, and that can depend
on the individual users’ settings.
An HTML document is a text-based document saved as plain text with the file
extension “.htm” or “.html”. The document might refer to other local files such
as images which should also be stored on the web site.
Tags
As mentioned, HTML is a mixture of the text you want to be read on screen, and
tags which format that text. For example, the tag <B> makes subsequent text
bold until a </B> tag when bold is turned off. Here are some more examples:
TAG Meaning
<HTML>…</HTML> Start/End of HTML (must be at start and end
of file)
<HEAD>…<TITLE>… Start/End of Header section (includes Title)
</TITLE>…</HEAD> – always at top of file
<BODY>…</BODY> Body start/end – bulk of file is within these
tags after the head
<P>…</P> Start/End of paragraph
<BR> Line break (browsers ignore carriage
returns and carry on – you must use this to
put in a new line)
<B>…</B> Bold On/Off
<U>…</U> Underscore On/Off
<I>…</I> Italic On/Off
<A>…</A> Anchor on/off (see below)
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<H1>…</H1> Heading 1 style – defaults to user’s setting

of font and style unless over-ridden by
attributes. Automatically puts in new
paragraph afterwards.
<H2>…</H2> Heading 2 style – defaults to user’s setting
of font and style unless over-ridden by
attributes. Automatically puts in new
paragraph afterwards.
<Hx>…</Hx> Heading x style – as above for subsequent
headings
Tables
You’ll notice when viewing web sites that most of them have a table-like feel to
them: they’ll have horizontal sections (rows) or vertical sections (columns) or a
mixture of the two. Almost all web designers use tables in HTML because they
give a high degree of control over how the page looks in a browser window,
without necessarily having to look like tables (i.e. with boxes round the cells). It
is important to keep control of table tags (most designers use indentation) as
you may end up wasting time trying to find the missing or extra tag. So these
tags are important to know:
TAG Meaning
<TABLE>…</TABLE> Start/end of table (must be at start and end
of table)
<TR>…</TR> Start/end of table row
<TD>…</TD> Start/end of table data (or cell) Note that
this in effect is describing a column
Tables can be nested: that is, you can have tables within tables. For example,
the shape on the right has a main table with four large rectangles, but within the
1
first rectangle (top left) is another table which has four small rectangles .
Anchors
With what we’ve already discussed, you have enough to start work, but before
we go on I should also mention anchors. These are used to link to other
documents (images, text, sound, Excel etc.) which may be local (i.e. part of this
site) or on the web (i.e. with http://). The basic format for an anchor is as in this
example:
<A HREF=”http://www.google.com”>Search Google</A>
1 The HTML for this would be:

<TABLE><TR><TD>
<TABLE><TR><TD></TD><TD></TD></TR><TR><TD></TD><TD></TD></TR></TABLE>
</TD><TD></TD></TR><TR><TD></TD><TD></TD></TR></TABLE>
OK?
Page 35
This anchor statement creates a hyperlink which says “Search Google”, which,
when clicked on, opens the anchor document.
Attributes
This topic has introduced a further component of HTML: attributes. In the
example, the opening anchor tag has an attribute HREF which equates to a
document or address. More of this later.
12.6 HTML Designing

Stage One: Basic Page
So how do you design a web page using a simple text editor such as Notepad?
Normally, Notepad will save your work as text files (.txt) - you need to make
sure you save it with an “.htm” or “.html” extension for it to work on a browser.
Above is a plain text file saved with the file extension “.htm”. In this case it has
been called “Index.htm” since this is the first page by default someone will go to
when they access your site (always ensure your key page is named
index.htm).
Notice how the HTML tags are used here: the document begins and ends with
HTML tags, the TITLE tags appear at the top within the HEAD tags, and the
main document is contained within the BODY tags. Additionally, the first
sentence is bold and it is followed by a paragraph (i.e. the paragraph will run to
either side of the user’s browser window regardless of its size).
Page 36
Here you can see the result when the document “Index.htm” is opened in a
browser window. Notice the text in the title bar of the browser, the boldfaced
text and the rest of the body text. You can specify particular fonts and other
formatting using tags: if you don’t, the browser will display the user’s default
settings for text.
I usually work with both Notepad and a browser open so I can view my changes
immediately by saving the Notepad changes and refreshing the browser window
to view the effects.
Stage Two: Adding a Table
As we have mentioned, a majority of web pages are designed using a table

format. This makes it much easier to place text and images neatly on the page.
You don’t have to see the table borders, so it can easily look as if there aren’t
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any tables on the page at all. In the example above, a table with one row and
two columns has been created. In the right-hand cell of the table, there is also a
hyperlink to another web site.
As you can see, tables are surrounded by the <TABLE> and </TABLE> tags,
and, within that, a new row is surrounded by <TR> and </TR> tags, and a new
cell (or Table Data) by <TD> and </TD> tags. Since one row and two data cells
have been identified, the table will essentially have two columns.
In addition, in each of the cells of this table, there is an anchor section which
provides hyperlinks. The first anchor links to a document on the same site and
references the document name, the second anchor links to a new web site and
therefore includes the HTTP reference. Any text between the anchors (e.g.
between <A> and </A>) appears as a hyperlink in the browser.
Although the external hyperlink is relatively straightforward (i.e. it gives the full
location of the target file), it is important to note here that the local link to
“mybiog.htm” specifies only the filename: this means that the file exists in the
same folder as the referencing document (i.e. in this case “index.htm”). You
may, however, have a special folder for biographies called “biogs”, in which
case the correct location of mybiog would be “biogs/mybiog.htm”. On complex
2
sites, these references may turn out to be quite long .
As you can see, the text appears in two cells of a table, although you don’t
actually see the table boundaries, and the hyperlinks appear in blue and
underlined. Clicking on these will direct the browser at the link defined in the
document by the anchors.
Stage Three: Adding Images and Sound
Images on web pages must be of two particular file types, a GIF file or a JPEG
file (e.g. “image.gif” or “picture.jpg”). Most image editing software - even free
2 . If your reference is to a “higher” folder (i.e. nearer the root directory), you need to first reference down to
that level using “../” for each parent folder. So if the biog folder was two levels higher, the reference here
would be “../../biogs/mybiog.htm”
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ones - allow you to save in these formats. They must be at a resolution of 72

dots per inch (dpi) so that people can download them quickly. You would need
ideally to have a scanner and photo-editing software to produce these images.
A number of formats are available for sound, but you need the visitor to your
site to have the appropriate sound player to be able to hear it. A popular format
for this is a RealAudio file, which is in a compressed format so that it downloads
quickly. It is ideal for short lo-fidelity samples of, for example, album tracks, to
give people a taster. The RealAudio recorder and player is available free from
www.RealAudio.com, so you should provide a link to their site if you use this
format so people can download the player. A great advantage with RealAudio
is that it can “stream” music as you listen so you don’t have to wait for the whole
track to download. If you want to consider putting on an entire downloadable
high quality track, you would need to consider making an MPEG (Moving
Picture Expert Group) file. The latest version - MP3 - is very popular with the
public (and rather unpopular with record companies!). To do this, you would
need a decoder such as “WINamp” and a link to www.winamp.com that offers it
for download. A four-minute track is around 4Mb and takes about 15 minutes to
download. Look at www.mp3.com for more information.
Without getting too far into HTML - you should purchase a book on the subject
such as “HTML - the Definitive Guide” (O’Reilly Press) - the last example here
will utilise an image and a sound.
Using the same format as the last example, the table’s left cell contains simple
text, and the right cell contains an image which, when you click on it, will play a
music sample. The additions to this HTML example are an image and a sound
sample. The sound sample is referenced with an anchor and the name of the
sample (in this case “music.rm” a RealAudio file) and an image. The tag for the
image is <IMG SRC = “picture.jpg”> (image tags don’t need an end tag). The
anchor is as usual a hyperlink which will launch the RealAudio software once
the extension “.ra” is recognised, so that clicking on the image will start the
sound sample playing.
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As you can see, our table now has text in the left cell and an image in the right
cell. The blue outline of the image lets you know it’s a hyperlink. As you can
see from the example, you will need to have a grasp of file management for this
to work.
RECOMMENDED READING
“Web Design in a Nutshell” (O’Reilly) at £15.95 which is very clear and far
cheaper than other tomes costing anything up to £50.
12.7 Attributes
Depending on the tag, a number of different attributes may be assigned to a tag
to further identify formatting. For a full description of HTML tags and their
attributes, it is worth having beside you a reference book such as “HTML
Programmer’s Reference” (Osborne, around £13).
For example, you may want to specify the height of a column in a table, putting
in the first row:
<TD HEIGHT=”30”>
This would fix the width of that column to 30 pixels. Pixels are the unit of
graphic currency of HTML, they correspond not to a size but to the lowest
common denominator of the output, i.e. the video card/monitor of a PC.
If you wanted to specify a font, you might do it this way:
The <FONT SIZE=2 FACE=”Arial”> cat </FONT> sat on the mat
Fonts can be attributed sizes of 1 to 5, 5 being the largest.
Or if you wanted the background colour of the body text of a document to be
red:
<BODY BGCOLOR=”#CC0000”>
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Colours (or “colors” to the rest of the English speaking and IT world) work in
HTML according to the old hexadecimal system (base 16), but you don’t need to
concern yourself with that, just follow the rules, which are:
Red1 Red2 Red3 Red4 Pink1 Pink2 Pink3 Pink4

cc0000 990000 990033 ff3366 ffccff ff00cc ff66ff cc6699
Mauve1 Mauve2 Mauve3 Mauve4 Lilac1 Lilac2 Lilac3 Lilac4

9966cc 6600cc 9966ff 9933ff cc99cc 996699 cc99ff cc66ff
Purple1 Purple2 Purple3 Purple4 Violet1 Violet2 Violet3 Violet4

330033 3333ff 333366 0000ff 333399 000099 3366cc 0000cc
L.Blue1 L.Blue2 L.Blue3 L.Blue4 D.Blue1 D.Blue2 D.Blue3 D.Blue4

6699cc 99ccff 66ccff 33ccff 0066cc 003399 003366 3399ff
L.Green1 L.Green2 L.Green3 L.Green4 D.Green1 D.Green2 D.Green3 D.Green4

99ffff 66ffff ccffff ccff66 336666 006666 003333 00cc99
Olive1 Olive2 Olive3 Olive4 Yellow1 Yellow2 Yellow3 Yellow4

ccff00 999900 333300 cccc99 ffffcc ffff00 ffff66 ffff99
Orange1 Orange2 Orange3 Orange4 Brown1 Brown2 Brown3 Brown4

ff6600 ff9933 993300 cc6633 663300 330000 996666 cc9999
Grey1 Grey2 Grey3 Grey4 White Black

cccccc 999999 666666 333333 ffffff 000000
Other attributes you have to pick up as you go along, there’s a generous

number of them which allow you to do quite a lot of things, but don’t get too
caught up and instead concern yourself with the bigger picture.
12.8 Advanced HTML Design

We have covered the basics of HTML in the preceding pages, but once you
have grasped these you’ll soon be looking to construct more adventurous web
pages. The remit of this document means that we cannot cover this in depth
but this section will look at some of the areas worth investigating, and some
pointers to where you can find out more.
Forms
There are a number of HTML tags that can be used to design forms which
enable users to supply or ask for data from the web administrator. These range
from simple forms which allow the user to send an email to the web
administrator to complex e-commerce forms which involve using third-party
finance and credit card companies.
Frames
Whereas tables are used to subdivide data on a web page using a single HTML
document, frames enable you to place different HTML documents in rectangular
areas of the screen, meaning you can keep some frames the same whilst
putting different data in other frames. Web designers are divided in their use of
frames: on the one hand they reduce download time by keeping some frames
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the same, on the other it is very difficult to link to frames. The alternative (which
most commercial sites use) is to use HTML tables that look like frames (i.e. the
same elements – such as a menu – appear on all HTML documents). See the
Appendix for more detailed frame analysis.
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
These are separate files referenced by HTML files which allow you to
standardize the formatting of your site documents with reference to data in the
CSS. See the Appendix.
Graphics
To spice up a web site, there are a number of technologies available to enhance
graphics (as well as programming – see below). Animated GIFs allow you to
make moving GIFs: Image Maps allow you to link to other documents
depending on where you click on a single image (e.g. a map); Flash from
Macromedia allows you to generate wild and wonderful images without too
much overhead.
Programming
Most programming languages can be used in script form on web pages,
although they do depend either on the user or the ISP having appropriate
libraries or software available to interpret them. They include Perl, Java, Visual
Basic, C++ amongst others.
Databasing
Databases are increasingly used “live” on a number of medium to large sites.
These need the appropriate level of support from your ISP, and can involve the
use of Structured Query Language (SQL), Extensible Markup Language (XML),
Active Server Pages (ASP), ActiveX Data Objects (ADO) and so on.
More…
To further your journey into HTML, here follows a list of useful sites, which in
turn will lead you on to many more:
www.w3.org/MarkUp/Guide/ - HTML beginner’s tutorial
www.w3.org/MarkUp/Guide/Advanced.html - HTML advanced tutorial
www.webmonkey.com - HTML tutorials
www.htmlhelp.com - HTML help
www.htmlcenter.com - HTML help
webdeveloper.earthweb.com/ - excellent resource for web development and
other aspects of the IT world
www.w3.org/ - the Worldwide Web Consortium – official www site with huge
amounts of helpful stuff
worldwidemart.com/scripts/ - Matt’s Script Archive – essential place to go for
Perl and CGI scripts for creating guestbooks etc.
/www.tucows.com/ - very useful site offering mountains of free software,
shareware and trial programmes
www.cnet.com/ - major source for computing and technology
www.macromedia.com/ - home of the flash guys
www.tek-tips.com/ - Tek Tips forum – discussion and help on all things IT
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www.planetsourcecode.com/ - comprehensive coding samples for the advanced

programmer
Also, I would recommend subscribing to Internet magazine (£3.75 per month),
also at www.internet-magazine.com.
12.9 HTML Tricks and Tips

Here follows some pointers towards making sure your site looks the best it can.
Plan It - Put yourself in the position of the user and plan the site before you
design it.
Sub-Divide - If you have a lot of pages and images on your site, don’t put them
all in the same place. Create sub-folders for groups of files (making sure you
reference them properly in your page design).
Get Help - There are a huge number of sites that can help you with your design.
The World Wide Web Consortium (www.w3c.org) is a good starting point; and
there are a plethora of sites which will help with free software and advice such
as www.thefreesite.com, www.freeindex.com, www.free-bee.net,
www.pocketstuffer.com, www.justfreestuff.com.
Keep it Simple & the 3 Click Rule - Don’t overcomplicate your design. Try to
ensure that a user is never more than three clicks away from any page on your
site. Don’t use flashy video, large images, lots of colours etc. just for the sake
of it - people will tire of waiting for the page to appear and might be overcome
once they get there. Keep images and sound samples small and use
compression.
Plaguarise - Don’t be afraid to use other people’s ideas - spend some time
looking at sites: if you like a page, look at the source code on your browser to
see how it’s done (select View and Source). There’s still a feel of co-operation
and enthusiasm about the Internet that promotes the sharing of ideas.
Test - Test your site, re-test and test again. Check all the hyperlinks, buttons,
menus, frames etc. Try the site with various options switched off on your
browser such as graphics. Try the site with different browsers. Test the site on
friends.
Keep it Up To Date - Nothing will put people off your site quicker than if they
see the same thing every time they access your site. Update it regularly.
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13. UPLOADING YOUR SITE - FTP

Introduced in the Jargon section earlier, we come on to File Transfer Protocol
(FTP). If you imagine your ISP’s big computer server as being an anonymous
box in the corner of your room, you need a way of getting your web pages onto
that machine. You can’t feed disks into it and you can’t send it email, but it does
have a network connection. So you transfer your files and folders just as if you
were transferring files on a network by copying them from your machine to the
other using a file management programme such as Windows Explorer. The
only difference with FTP is that you are doing it using a phone line.
Your ISP should provide you with the software to use FTP, and it must provide
you with set-up information and passwords needed. If they don’t provide the
programme themselves, there are many free FTP programmes available on the
web (such as WS_FTP from www.ipswitch.com).
For each provider you have you will need to set up FTP properties. Below is a
typical set of properties for FTP:
The key fields here are:

Host Name/Address – this will begin with “.ftp” and usually relates to your
domain name or your ISP’s domain name
User ID (or User Name) – this will be given to you and is usually a mixture of
letters and numbers
Password – as ever, a password
And that’s it! There will be other details (such as the local starting folder), but
you will be informed of these or you can work them out yourself.
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Once logged in, the programme will look something like this example. On the
left is your local machine and on the right is your bit of your ISP’s server. Once
connected, all you do is drag files and folders from one to the other. It will
automatically overwrite older files of the same name with newer ones, usually
without asking.
Most FTP programmes recognise the difference between the two different types
of files: ASCII (which are plain text files such as standard html pages) and
Binary (which are mostly image and sound files). If it doesn’t, you need to let it
know which type you are currently transferring.
When you’ve finished, simply close the FTP programme. You can usually view
the result of your efforts by logging onto the internet and browsing your site.
Some ISPs, however, may delay in updating your pages and may even check
the content in case it might offend.
CGI and Log Files
An interesting in the example is the directory structure on the server (right). The
web site files are all stored in the “public_html” folder, but what are the others
for? Other ISPs may not do it quite the same way, but there will always be a
“cgi-bin” (or similar) and a “logs” folder (or similar).
The cgi-bin folder is used to store Perl and other programming language
scripts: you might use this folder if you’d designed a guestbook for your site
(look at http://worldwidemart.com/scripts/ for how you can do this).
The logs folder will store daily reports on people who have visited your web site:
your ISP may only keep five day’s worth of these at a time, so you will have to
download them frequently if you need them. Once stored, you can use log file
analyzer software to import and analyse the data. I use a programme
NetIntellect to analyse these files and then I put the results into Excel to make
charts: search for log file analysers at www.tucows.com.
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14. ADVERTISING YOUR SITE

There’s little point in putting together a web site if no-one sees it. The following
provides some pointers on how you can advertise your site.
14.1 META Tags

The META tag is one of the best means of getting your site onto the databases
of search engines. The tag is placed in the <HEAD> section of your HTML
document. Two META tags are the most important here, regarding a brief
description of your site and keywords for the site. These are of the form:
<META NAME=“description” CONTENT=“Site on International
Jazz Organisations and Jazz Festivals”>
<META NAME=“keywords” CONTENT=“jazz, organisation, jazz
organisations, festivals, jazz festivals, music, arts”>
14.2 Search Engines

Although many search engines will crawl the web and may find your site, you
will need to access each of the search engine sites in turn and find forms on
which you can tell them about your site. Some search engines will ask about
your site generally, others will require you to tell them about individual pages on
your site. If the latter, do not post too many or they will think you are
“spamming” them and not include you at all. Search engines can take as little
as a day to register your site or as much as 2 weeks to a month. After a
reasonable amount of time, use the search engines to find your site. If you
can’t, re-submit information to them.
The following are some of the most popular engines:
Alta Vista uk.altavista.com
Google www.google.com
Hotbot www.hotbot.com
Lycos www.lycos.com
Scoot www.scoot.co.uk
Search UK www.searchuk.co.uk
UK Plus www.ukplus.co.uk
Yahoo uk.yahoo.com
Yellow Pages www.yell.co.uk
Also, look at www.powersearch.com or www.metasearch.com who will query

several search engines at once for you.
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14.3 Reciprocal Links

Spend some time talking to and emailing people about reciprocal links. Create
a Links page on your site and put in hyperlinks to other related sites on the
understanding that they do the same for you. This will create a surprising
amount of extra “hits” for your site.
14.4 Sponsorship
If you feel you have a good enough profile to interest a sponsor, you will need to
think about appropriate sponsors for your site and the nature of the
sponsorship. A sponsor will need to know that you are receiving a certain
number of hits per week to make it worth their while. You may get sponsorship
in kind (e.g. free hardware) or on a fee per year basis for x number of years.
Minimal sponsorship will require than you display a small logo on designated
parts of your site and major sponsorship will require you to place a banner ad at
the top of your site, always visible. When clicked on, these images will take the
user to the sponsor’s site.
14.5 Emailshots
Care must be taken when doing an emailshot, especially if you have email
addresses from a third party or from people you have never personally
contacted before. The Internet community is getting increasingly militant about
“spam” or unsolicited email, and there are a number of legal recourses which
are becoming available to prosecute consistent offenders. Emailshots are,
however, very easy and fast to do: you write your email and select any number
of recipients and then just send it! However, limit such advertising to email
addresses you’re sure won’t object to receiving your messages. You might
consider inviting members of the audience at your gigs to write down their email
addresses to receive regular mailings about your performances and releases.
14.6 WebTV
Interactive TV is viewable on both televisions and computers. To watch
interactive TV on your television, you need to use the WebTV™-based Internet
Receiver (a set-top box that uses the Microsoft® WebTV Network™ Plus
service). To watch it on a computer, you need to use Microsoft® WebTV™ for
Windows (a feature of Microsoft® Windows® 98) with a compatible TV tuner
card. Web page content such as menus, graphics, and supporting text can be
seamlessly integrated with the TV image. For more information on WebTV, look
at webtv.net.
14.7 Other Advertising

Don’t forget that normal means of advertising are still as effective as in other
fields: leaflets, posters, word of mouth, adverts in publications and so on.
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15. GETTING FEEDBACK
15.1 Counters
You can place a counter on any page on your site to monitor the number of
“hits” your page is getting. This involves incorporating a CGI script as part of
your page, and you will need to contact your ISP or view their site on the way
that they deal with CGI scripts and pre-formatted counter icons they have
available - the counter itself will be available from their server. Remember that
a counter may “count against you” - to coin a phrase - as a low count on your
opening page may discourage people from viewing the rest of your site and a
sponsor from sponsoring you. What you can do is create a page just for
counters that only you know about that will count all your different pages in one
place.
15.2 Forms
Forms provide a very useful way for people to contact you and provide
information. The HTML code for these is beyond the scope of this document
and you will need a reference source to compile them. You can include form
fields, tick boxes, option boxes and many other devices to streamline your
forms. Once someone has filled in and sent information on a form, it arrives in
your email Inbox.
15.3 Forums/Discussion Groups

Setting up a forum or discussion group on your site will greatly increase the
likelihood of people accessing your site. However, many ISPs do not provide
this service, so ask them if they do before you sign up if you want this facility.
Essentially these will enable people to engage in dialogues with each other.
Some companies specialise in these: look at Xoom at www.xoom.com or
Cyberforums at www.cyberforums.com.
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15.4 Log File Analysis

We looked at this in the previous chapter, and here are some pointers as to
what these statistics mean.
Visitors, Visits and Requests
The distinction here is often lost, and it is important to know the difference
between these types of statistic. Here is a table which might help – it concerns
the drinking habits of Carl, Sarah and Pete, and the number of drinks they
bought at the pub on Monday and Tuesday:
Name Mon Mon Tues Tues Drinks Visits

lunch eve lunch eve
Carl 1 2 3 1 7 4
Sarah 2 2 1
Pete 1 4 5 2
Drinks 6 8 14
Visits 4 3 7
Visitors 3 2
Carl, Sarah and Pete are visitors. If there is an entry in the body of the table it
is a visit. The number of drinks bought corresponds to a request (i.e. looking
at a particular web page).
The figures show that on Monday there were three visitors, four visits and six
requests. On Tuesday, however, there were two visitors, three visits and eight
requests.
The distinction between visitors and visits is demonstrated here in that Carl
went to the pub at lunchtime and in the evening: one visitor made two visits.
Other Log File Data
Log files also tell you:
! which browser was used for each visit
! which country (or domain) the visitor came from
! the referring domain name
! whether the visitor was domestic, international or unknown
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16. MARKETING ON THE INTERNET

The Internet is the least expensive marketing tool the band or musician will have
at his or her disposal. People from around the world can read your message
and you can form a business relationship with them for a fraction of the cost of
any other marketing method.
16.1 Writing good copy

Ivor Levinson, an American freelance copywriter who has worked for Microsoft
Intel, Adobe and Hewlett Packard, sums up the ethos of writing copy for the
web:
"The web today is a text based medium and you've got to quickly capture the
reader's interest and attention. In other words, as always, you have to establish
a relationship with the reader and therefore write with energy, enthusiasm and
personality. Spirit, energy, personality, warmth, friendliness and honesty have
always worked in print and they will continue to work in cyberspace.”
It is worth your while taking a look at Ivor Levinson's website for some useful
tips on writing copy and marketing. See www.Levinson.com.
16.2 Creating an effective website

When you are creating your website there are a number of questions you need
to address to help you improve your copy.
Who are you? - There are many websites out there, whether business or
individuals, who do not state who they are and what they do. You need this
information on the front page.
What's in it for them? - A great number of sites do not tell viewers how they
may benefit from using the site. People are more likely to stay if they are
informed and entertained.
Too many graphics? - Large graphics on a site take time to download which
means the viewer may well turn to another site.
Have you checked your grammar? - Typos on a website will make you look
like an amateur. Check and then check again for spelling mistakes, syntax,
grammar, punctuation and mistakes with the use of capitals.
How much searching is required? - Give the users plenty of options of where
to go. Always put a full menu of navigation bars.
Who will people contact? - Place contact information at the bottom of each
page. Whatever page people print off they will have the contact information to
hand.
Have you made sure the important information is at the top of the page? -
If people do not want to scroll down the pages they will get the important
message.
Testimonials - Testimonials can help sell your music. The "testimonial" may be
a complimentary sentence from a press review or a quote from a promoter or
festival organiser. The golden rule is to keep the testimonials short and pithy.
On the web no-one really knows who you are or how credible you are - up-to-
date testimonials can bridge the gap.
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Headlines of the information on your site - These headlines link to the

information soundclips etc on their own pages on your site.
What's new - Let users know what information has been added or changed or
when the site was last updated.
Press releases - These give people an in-depth understanding of you and your
music (providing it is well written) that might not be contained on the site.
Sales materials and catalogues - These pages give detailed information about
the band and any CDs for sale or how they can get a demo CD.
Registration form - Ask people to identify themselves so you can start to build
a relationship with them. Keep the form simple, ask only a few questions, name,
address and email address. Carry a proviso that you will not pass this
information on to a third party. The fewer questions there are, the more chance
there is of them completing the form.
Email response form - Make sure that people can contact you direct.
Contact information - Your address or PO box number, telephone and fax
numbers should be included on all pages as people print out individual pages
not just the front pages.
Make your site available in several languages - If possible, add buttons to the
site that allow customers to select a language of their choice. To be culturally
sensitive do not label the button German or French etc, but Deutche and
Francais. If possible have the page written or edited by a native speaker.
Be aware of cultural differences - What can be taken for granted in this
country could be offensive to people in other countries. For example, a woman's
bare arm or leg could be seen as pornographic in another country.
Be considerate in word choice and idioms - Words and idiomatic
expressions can have a different connotation in other countries. For example,
the anecdote of the Chevy Nova not selling in Mexico because No Va means
"does not go"!
Be aware of colours - Certain colours and combinations that are effective in
the UK may be meaningless in other countries. Red, white and blue would carry
little meaning in Brazil - whose national colours are green and yellow.
Be aware of international laws - For example, in Germany, it is against the
law to compare your product with a competitor's product or in Spain you cannot
use the Country's flag. These examples serve to highlight the fact that you
cannot be too careful on the web.
16.3 Selling On-Line

Whilst being more for record companies and not a feasible option for most
musicians, it is worth looking briefly at credit card purchasing since it is the
fastest growing method of purchasing goods (including CDs), and inevitably the
costs of selling your CDs this way will continue to come down, so it is an area
that needs to be looked at as part of this presentation.
Obviously, this is an area that is changing rapidly, and at present the costs of
internet credit card transactions are higher overall than a normal credit card
arrangement. However, normally a bank requires two years of prior trading to
allow you to offer a credit card facility, but because so many new businesses
are starting out on the net, there are now plans to waive this rule. You would,
Page 51
however, be expected to pay start-up costs and anything up to ten per cent
commission per transaction.
Generally, there are two stages involved: once someone fills out a form on a
web site with their order and credit card details, the information would pass to a
secure server and then on to a bank for verification. If this goes through, you
would be informed by email that an order has been placed. In the UK, the
transaction uses 40-bit encryption, or in simple terms, it codes the information
with an identifier which has a trillion (1,000,000,000,000) possible numbers.
There are several e-commerce companies, some of which offer a full service
and others which require you to organise a credit card agreement with a bank
first: if the latter, companies like Barclaycard or MasterCard will charge between
£125 and £250 to set up an account, and charge from 2 to 5 per cent
commission for each transaction. On top of that, a company with a secure
server to handle the transaction would charge a set-up fee of around £75 per
product and a commission of around 4 per cent.
FURTHER EXAMPLES
Here are some examples of sites that may be able to assist you if you’re
considering setting up e-commerce on your site (please note that prices were
correct at time of writing – please check them for latest prices):
SECPay (www.secpay.com)
Need credit card arrangement with bank already. £50 set-up, £50 per year and
1 per cent of transaction.
NetBanx (www.netbanx.com)
With a credit card arrangement with a bank already, £75 set-up per product and
4 per cent commission. For bureau service (i.e. all inclusive), £75 set-up per
product and around £3 per transaction.
DataCash (www.datacash.com)
Need credit card arrangement with bank already. Supplies software which runs
on your own secure server and charges £600 per year plus 10p per transaction.
Secure Trading (www.securetrading.com)
Need credit card arrangement with bank already. Annual fee of £295 and 2 per
cent commission.
E-payment Solutions (www.epaymentsolutions.com)
Complete bureau service. Between £900 and £4000 set-up and then 2 to 3 per
cent commission.
It might also be getting in touch with the Association of Payment and Clearing
Services at www.apacs.org.uk and there are tips available from
http://builder.com/Business/Ecommerce/
16.4 Legal and Copyright Issues

Unless you are the outright owner of multimedia material, you will need to take a
serious look at legal and copyright issues if you are to put images, photographs
and music on the web.
With images and graphic material, you need only seek the permission of the
owner to use them, as long as they do in fact own the material themselves.
They will often be pleased to advertise their photographic abilities as long as
they are given a credit. However, aware that there’s a seventy-year copyright
Page 52
on maps, I was able to use 1914 maps on a site I designed to good effect, but I
also used some Victorian photographs for which I received a hasty reminder
from the owners that I would need to pay £40 per year per picture. People will
find you.
The chances are that if you do want to use multimedia material, you will be
thinking about 30-second samples of tracks as either an example of your band’s
performing abilities or as a lead-in to getting some CD sales.
These matters are covered by the Performing Right Society (PRS) and the
Mechanical Copyright Protection Society (MCPS), who can be found regarding
these issues respectively at www.prs.co.uk/websites/ and
www.mcps.co.uk/medialicensing/. The following is a summary of what they
have to say.
If you have personal ownership of your music and have made agreements with
any other musicians who perform on tracks you wish to put on the web, look no
further. In any other case, you will need agreements with the PRS, the MCPS
and possibly the record company as well. Unless you know otherwise you will
need to contact these parties individually, although the PRS and MCPS are
working towards a “one-stop” approach of clearing the use of tracks. This is
slightly complicated by the fact that music which is “streamed” (i.e. downloads
“live”) or simply downloaded can be considered differently. Technologies to
prevent people keeping copies of music tracks on their system are still in their
early days (and people will always be able to copy from analogue sound).
Your site will be considered on its own use of such material, and it is highly
likely that you will be able to make a broad license arrangement with MCPS. As
an example, you might pay around £500 for exhibiting 150 thirty second
samples on your site. This may also include the right to extend the use of such
material to other media such as mobile phones.
Before you enter into such an arrangement, make sure you get your facts
straight. Make a detailed inventory of the tracks you want to use along with the
writer(s), musicians, Website URL, the context of music use, proposed duration
of music use, nature of website, number of hits per month (if known), the license
term you need and name of developer / production company. They will be
much more approachable if you’re on top of this information. On the sites
mentioned, there are online forms and more detail on these issues.
16.5 Further reference

There is an excellent book on marketing on-line which is highly recommended:
"Guide to Marketing on the Internet" by Don Janal and published by John Wiley
& Sons Inc.
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17. Advanced Links

There are a growing plethora of web sites which can assist you in putting
together a web site, whether it be HTML or Flash software, analysis tools,
development, programming, and so on. Here is a selection; some of which may
disappear, many more could be added, even more will appear for the first time.
They are subdivided into categories to help you find what you are looking for.
17.1 Browsers
As well as the usual (Internet Explorer www.microsoft.com and Netscape
www.netscape.co.uk), you should also test your site with Opera
(www.opera.com) and Mozilla (www.mozilla.org). To test your site on different
browsers at a stroke, consider buying NetMechanic (www.netmechanic.com) or
BrowserMaster (www.applythis.com).
17.2 Images and Audio

Beyond text and basic graphics, there is a wealth of multimedia content that it is
possible to incorporate into your site. Macromedia immediately comes to mind
(www.macromedia.com) with a vast array of multimedia available within Director
Shockwave Studio, or alternatively Adobe Premiere (www.adobe.com), both of
which are at the top end. For audio and video, you may need
RealAudio/RealVideo (www.realnetworks.com) or Apple QuickTime
(www.apple.com/uk/quicktime/products/qt). For audio editing or production, try
Sound Forge (www.sonicfoundry.com) or Cooledit (www.cooledit.com). For
specific graphics and photo editing, top-end packages include Adobe
Photoshop (www.adobe.co.uk) (who also offer the much cheaper Photoshop
Elements) and Macromedia Fireworks MX (www.macromedia.co.uk). Cheaper
graphic packages include Paint Shop Pro (www.digitalworkshops.co.uk) and
WebStyle (www.xara.com), although for nothing you might try VCW VicMan
Photo Editor (www.photo-editor.net) or UltimatePaint (www.ultimatepaint.com).
17.3 Editors
Adobe GoLive (www.adobe.co.uk) and Macromedia Dreamweaver
(www.macromedia.co.uk) are high end web site builders, whilst for those on a
budget you might try NetObjects Fusion (www.netobjects.com) or Namo
WebEditor (www.namo.com).
17.4 Development Tools

If you’re serious about programming your site (especially using Visual Basic),
you should look at Microsoft Visual Studio.NET (www.microsoft.com); they also
produce the less daunting ASP.NET (www.asp.net). For ColdFusion, you’ll
need Macromedia ColdFusion (www.macromedia.co.uk). For XML, try XML
Spy (www.xmlspy.com). For PHP try Zend Studio (www.zend.com). For
cascading style sheets and XHTML try TopStyle Pro (www.bradsoft.com). For
creating PDFs, at the top end you’ll need Adobe Acrobat (www.adobe.co.uk), or
for a cheaper version pdfMachine (www.pdfmachine.net). Finally, Warren
Webdesign (web.ukonline.co.uk/warren.webdesign) have helpful examples of
HTML, CSS, JavaScript and META tags.
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17.5 Marketing/Ecommerce
WebPosition Gold (www.webpositiongold.com) helps you with creating META
tags as well as advice so that search engines will pick up on your site, or you
can look at www.searchenginewatch.com for its advice. If you’re thinking of
email newsletters, look at ListBuilder (www.listbuilder.com) or Bravenet
(www.bravenet.com) or www.linkcounter.com. For larger e-commerce software
there’s Microsoft Commerce Server (www.microsoft.com), Actinic Catalog
(www.actinic.co.uk) or Extend (www.equology.com). For cheaper e-commerce
solutions, look at Astrocell Small Store, EZCart (www.is-designs.com/ezcart) or
ShopFitter (www.shopfitter.com).
17.6 Web Site Analysis

The pricier products include Web Trends (www.webtrends.com), Clickstream
(www.clickstream.co.uk) and NedStat (www.nedstat.com). For the more
budget-conscious: Open Web Scope (www.openwebscope.com), Mach5
(www.mach5.com) and Analog (www.analog.cx). If you wish to purchase
analytic services from third parties for a subscription, try Hitbox
(www.hitbox.com) or TheCounter (www.thecounter.com).
17.7 Download Sites

As well as software to buy, there’s an awful lot of shareware and freeware
programmes available, even from the larger companies. Here are some useful
sites which allow you to browse what web software is available, often for free:
Tucows (www.tucows.com), Download.com (www.download.com), Web
Developer’s Journal (www.webdevelopersjournal.com/software/webtools.html),
NetMechanic (www.netmechanic.com), bCentral (www.bcentral.com), Bravenet
(www.bravenet.com), Macromedia (www.macromedia.com), Apple
(www.apple.com/downloads), Internet Magazine (www.internet-magazine.com)
and Help 4 Web (www.help4web.net).
17.8 Error Checking

Your eyes may deceive you, so test your site with HTML Validator
(www.htmlvalidator.com), A Real Validator (www.arealvalidator.com), Xenu Link
Sleuth (http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html). For more expense, try
SiteMorse (www.business2www.com).
Page 55
Appendix: The Jazz Site
Page 56
An Example of Web Site Design

To look at how a site is put together, we’ll look at The Jazz Site, the web site set
up by Jazz Services (JSL).
Technical Set-Up
The company uses an ISP called XO Communications who provided a router
linked into the JSL network via a BT Highway ISDN line (soon to be ADSL) as
well as web hosting and email services. The bulk of the pages on the site are
generated using Visual Basic code against an Access database which
generates reports which are send by FTP to the XO server. The rest of the site
is mostly text coded, with the odd bit of Java to do the tricky stuff.
Basic Structure: Frames

The first part of this description looks largely at frames, so is not for the
beginner. It is also flying in the face of some of what has been said before, i.e.
that frames are not the best way to go. However, frames have been used to
save download time: when connections get generally faster, this design will
dispense with frames, by which time a new coding technology will probably have
taken over anyway. So for those looking for basics, miss out this section and go
to the next.
Framesets
Let’s look first of all at the opening screen:
The HTML that goes into the initial file “index.htm” includes the FRAMESET tag
which creates two frames which create two columns, the left 150 pixels wide:
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<FRAMESET COLS="150,*" FRAMEBORDER=0 BORDER=0

FRAMESPACING=0 FRAMEBORDER=no>
<FRAME SRC="index2.htm" NAME="frame1" MARGINHEIGHT="0"
MARGINWIDTH="0" NORESIZE="NORESIZE" FRAMEBORDER="0"
BORDER="0" SCROLLING="no" FRAMEBORDER="no">
</FRAMESET>
This may look confusing, but what happens is that “index.htm” identifies two
frames, frames 1 and 2. In frame 1, it assigns the file “index2.htm”, and in
frame 2 the file “index3.htm”. Frame 1 contains the main menu which always
remains there. Frame 2 is again subdivided by the HTML in “index3.htm”:
The Frame 1 file “index2.htm” contains a number of images with a background

black colour which (from the top) are a logo, 8 menu images, and below that an
Arts Council logo and a little animated piano GIF (in fact, all the images are
GIFs).
The file “index3.htm” then subdivides frame 2 into “frametop” and “framemid”:
into which it puts the files “banner.htm” which always remains there, and
“index4.htm”. The code for that subdivides frame 2 by 2 rows, the first 90 pixels
deep:
<FRAMESET ROWS="90,*" FRAMEBORDER=0 BORDER=0 FRAMESPACING=0
FRAMEBORDER=no>
<FRAME SRC="banner.htm" NAME="frametop"
MARGINHEIGHT="0" MARGINWIDTH="0" FRAMEBORDER="0" BORDER="0"
NORESIZE SCROLLING="no" FRAMEBORDER="no">
<FRAME SRC="index4.htm" NAME="framemid"
MARGINHEIGHT="0" MARGINWIDTH="0" NORESIZE FRAMEBORDER="0"
BORDER="0" SCROLLING="auto" FRAMEBORDER="no">
</FRAMESET>
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The frames above result. This time, “banner.htm” remains a fixed frame, with a
number of images which include the banner itself as well as an animated GIF
which moves through three different images in its cycle.
Finally, the file “index4.htm” includes a further FRAMESET chunk of HTML:
<FRAMESET COLS="483,133,*" FRAMEBORDER="0" BORDER="0"
FRAMESPACING="0">
<FRAME SRC="jazzsite.htm" NAME="frame3" MARGINHEIGHT="20"
MARGINWIDTH="20" FRAMEBORDER="0" NORESIZE="NORESIZE"
FRAMEBORDER="no" SCROLLING="auto">
<FRAME SRC="indexmenu.htm" NAME="frame4"
MARGINHEIGHT="10" MARGINWIDTH="10"
NORESIZE="NORESIZE" FRAMEBORDER="0" FRAMEBORDER="no"
SCROLLING="no">
This code assigns three areas: a column 483 pixels wide to which it (initially)
assigns the file “jazzsite.htm”, a column 133 pixels wide to which it assigns a
semi-permanent file “indexmenu.htm”, and an empty area to the right.
This site is specifically measured rather than intended to be stretched, so the
total width should be one which low resolution monitors/video cards can view
comfortably.
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The final frameset therefore divides framemid thus:
Now let’s look in more detail at the opening file of the site, which has the same
name as the opening file of all sites, “index.htm”. These have been annotated
using the “#” symbol in bold:
<HTML><HEAD>
#standard start of HTML file
<META NAME="KEYWORDS"
CONTENT="jazz,world music,blues,jazz services,music,jazz
music,musician,musicians,jazz musician,jazz
musicians,promoter,jazz promoter,promoters,jazz
promoters,jazz clubs, clubs,jazz
club,music,agent,agents,jazz agent,jazz
agents,venue,venues,jazz venue,jazz venues,jazz uk,jazz
newspapers,jazz magazine,jazz magazines,abjm,british
jazz,uk jazz,instrument,instruments,jazz instruments,jazz
shop,jazz shops,jazz retail,recording,jazz recording,jazz
book,jazz cd,jazz education,education,jazz business,jazz
organisation,jazz company">
#META tag keywords designed to appeal to search engines
<META NAME="description"
CONTENT="The Jazz Site is the UK's home of Jazz - the most
comprehensive UK jazz site on the web.">
#META tag description designed to appear in search engine description
<TITLE>JAZZ SERVICES - THE JAZZ SITE</TITLE>
</HEAD>
#TITLE to appear in window header
<FRAMESET COLS="150,*" FRAMEBORDER=0 BORDER=0
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FRAMESPACING=0 FRAMEBORDER=no>
</FRAMESET>
#FRAMESET description (see above)
<NOFRAMES>
<BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF">
This site is best viewed with Netscape Navigator 3+ or
Microsoft Internet Explorer 3+, and ideally with Microsoft
Internet Explorer 5+.
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
<TR ALIGN="CENTER"><TD VALIGN="MIDDLE" ALIGN="CENTER"
HEIGHT="200"><IMG SRC="jsbg.gif"></A></TD></TR>
<TR ALIGN="CENTER"><TD
WIDTH="100">      </TD><TD
VALIGN="MIDDLE" ALIGN="CENTER"><A
HREF="jsbg.gif"></A></TD><TD></TD></TR>
</table>
</BODY>
</NOFRAMES>
#If your browser understands FRAMESET commands, this section is not
necessary and is not seen, but if it doesn’t, this displays the message
</HTML>
#end of HTML file
The other FRAMESET files are identical but for the different FRAMESET
commands which we have already seen, so let us now look at the contents of
individual frames.
Remember that frame 1 contained the file “index2.htm” which remains fixed
throughout. This frame does an important job, because it conditions the
contents of framemid, which in turn conditions the contents of frames 3 and 4.
The code for index2.htm is as follows (with … signifying jumps in the
presentation):
<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Jazz Services</TITLE>
# start of Java script which conditions the behaviour of the menu images
when the mouse passes over them or when they are clicked; the “<!—“ tag
hides the code from HTML making only visible to Java decoding
<script>

</script>
# end of Java script
</HEAD>
<BODY BGCOLOR="#000000">
# defines body background colour (black)
<TABLE BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0"

WIDTH="150">
<TR><TD>
<A HREF="jsl/siteinfo.htm" TARGET="_BLANK"
onmouseover="lighten('name9'); window.status='ABOUT THE
JAZZ SITE'; return true;" onmouseout="darken('name9');
window.status='';return true"
onclick="lighten('name9')"><IMG SRC="com/jslog.gif"
ALT="About the Jazz Site" ALIGN="middle" BORDER="0"
name="name9" HEIGHT="175"></TD></TR>
# first cell in table has the JSL logo
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<TR><TD><A HREF="jsl/jslfram.htm" TARGET="framemid"

onmouseover="lighten('name0'); window.status='ALL ABOUT THE
COMPANY, WHAT WE DO...'; return true;"
onmouseout="darken('name0'); window.status='';return true"
onclick="lighten('name0')"><IMG SRC="com/jsl.gif"
ALT="About Jazz Services" ALIGN="middle" BORDER="0"
name="name0" HEIGHT="18"></A></TD></TR>
# second cell has first image: if the mouse goes over it, it replaces the
button image with a lighter one, if the image is clicked, it puts the file
“jsl/jslfram.htm” in the frame framemid. Similar operations occur for
subsequent buttons, finishing on the last one (for extras):
…
<TR><TD><A HREF="ex/exfram.htm" TARGET="framemid"
onmouseover="lighten('name7'); window.status='ABJM,
REPORTS, NJFA AND MORE...'; return true;"
onmouseout="darken('name7'); window.status='';return true"
onclick="darken('name7')"><IMG SRC="com/extra.gif"
ALT="Extra Stuff!" ALIGN="middle" BORDER="0"
name="name7"></A></TD></TR>
<TR><TD HEIGHT="50"></TD></TR>
<TR><TD>  <IMG SRC="com/ace.gif"
onmouseover="window.status='THE JAZZ SITE IS GRATEFUL TO
THE ARTS COUNCIL OF ENGLAND FOR LOTTERY FUNDING'; return
true;">     <IMG
SRC="com/keys.gif" ALIGN="TOP"
onmouseover="window.status='THE JAZZ SITE IS GRATEFUL TO
THE MUSICIANS UNION FOR SPONSORSHIP'; return
true;"></TD></TR>
# the last cell in the table has the Arts Council logo (which, when clicked,
opens the Arts Council site) and the keyboard image.
</TABLE>
<A HREF="readme.txt" TARGET="_BLANK"></A>
</BODY>
</HTML>
You don’t have to be a Java programmer to include Java in your site. Java can,
however, do things which HTML certainly can’t, so don’t look a gift horse in the
mouth, and get onto some Java sites, look at the source code for pages that
use Java to do things you need to do, and copy the code. It’s then easy to
amend it for your own purposes just by replacing the existing filenames with
your filenames etc.
Now, let’s suppose that the user clicks on the first button on the left menu and
chooses “Jazz Service”: as we have seen, what they get is the file
“jsl/jslfram.htm” in the frame framemid. They will see this:
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The relevant FRAMESET command here is this:

<FRAMESET COLS="483,133,*" FRAMEBORDER="0" FRAMEBORDER="no"
BORDER="0" FRAMESPACING="0">
<FRAME SRC="aboutjsl.htm" NAME="frame3" MARGINHEIGHT="20"
MARGINWIDTH="20" FRAMEBORDER="0" NORESIZE
NORESIZE="NORESIZE" FRAMEBORDER="no" SCROLLING="auto">
<FRAME SRC="jslmenu.htm" NAME="frame4" MARGINHEIGHT="10"
MARGINWIDTH="10" NORESIZE NORESIZE="NORESIZE"
FRAMEBORDER="0" FRAMEBORDER="no" SCROLLING="no">
</FRAMESET>
As you can see, this is very similar to the original commands that filled frames 3
and 4, it’s just filling them with different files: a file which talks about Jazz
Services in frame 3, and a menu particular to Jazz Services in frame 4.
Finally – and to complete FRAMES – let’s look at the contents of the right-hand
menu. Actually, all this has to do is change the contents of frame 3. The Jazz
Services menu for this looks like the following (annotated):
<HTML><HEAD> …
</HEAD>
<BODY BACKGROUND="../com/jsbg1.gif" LINK="#FFA500"
ALINK="#00C8C8" VLINK="#00C8C8"> …
# background image for frame set, with default colours for links before
and after they are clicked and links used
<H3>Jazz<BR>Services</H3>
#basic header
<TABLE ALIGN="LEFT" CELLPADDING="2" CELLSPACING="0"
BORDER="0" WIDTH="133">
# table to hold menu items
<TR><TD>
<A HREF="aboutjsl.htm" TARGET="frame3" TITLE="About Jazz
Services (English)" onmouseover="window.status='READ ABOUT
THE ACTIVITIES OF JAZZ SERVICES IN ENGLISH'; return
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true;">About Us (Eng)</A></TD></TR><TR><TD>
<A HREF="abjsl_fr.htm" TARGET="frame3" TITLE="About Jazz
Services (Francais)" onmouseover="window.status='READ ABOUT
THE ACTIVITIES OF JAZZ SERVICES IN FRENCH'; return
true;">About Us (Fr)</A></TD></TR><TR><TD> …
# first two menu items: opens English version of description of Jazz
Services in frame 3 or French version in frame 3: all HTML
<A HREF="siteinfo.htm" TARGET="frame3" TITLE="STORY OF THE
JAZZ SITE" onmouseover="window.status='FIND OUT ABOUT HOW
THE JAZZ SITE WAS PUT TOGETHER'; return true;">STORY OF THE
<BR>JAZZ SITE</A></TD></TR>
<TR><TD HEIGHT="20"></TD></TR>
<TR><TD ALIGN="LEFT"><IMG SRC="../com/jslogo.gif"
onmouseover="window.status='JAZZ SERVICES IS A REGISTERED
CHARITY'; return true;"></TD></TR>
# after all the other menu items, the story of the jazz site and the JSL logo
</TABLE></BODY></HTML>
# end of file
Body Text
This section concerns the bulk of the site – the data that appears in the
changing centre of the site frames:
This view illustrates two main attributes of the central part of the site: the style of
the header and the text style. The HTML follows, with the “…” characters
indicate text missed out, and “#” character indicating an annotation:
<HTML><HEAD>
# standard beginning
<META NAME="KEYWORDS"
CONTENT="jazz,world music,blues,jazz services,music,jazz
music,musician,musicians,jazz musician,jazz musicians">
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# keywords used for the benefit of search engines

<META NAME="description"
CONTENT="Jazz Services. The Jazz Site is the UK's home of
Jazz">
# brief description intended to appear in search engine description
<TITLE>THE JAZZ SITE: JAZZ SERVICES</TITLE>
# title is window title
<LINK REL="STYLESHEET" HREF="../styles/about.css"
TYPE="text/css">
# this section tells the file to look at the stylesheet file “about.css” for
information about body and heading styles for this sheet; the style sheet
will be used for a number of files so the font descriptions don’t have to be
repeated in each individual file. We will look at the stylesheet after this to
see what it contains.
</HEAD><BODY>
<TABLE BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0">
# most text in the body of the main frame is enclosed within a table to
make it more flexible and easier to manipulate; BORDER is set to 0 so that
there are no lines, CELLPADDING and CELLSPACING set to 0 because the
distance between frames has already been dealt with (you may wish to
give a value of 1 or 2 to these)
<TR><TD>
<H1>About Jazz Services &nbsp <A HREF="abjsl_fr.htm"><IMG
SRC="../com/french.gif" ALT="FRANCAIS" HSPACE="4"></A><A
HREF="abjsl_gm.htm"><IMG SRC="../com/german.gif"
ALT="DEUTSCHE" HSPACE="4"></A></H1>
# the first cell in this single-column table contains the heading (which has
its own particular font, size and colour designated by the style sheet) as
well as two graphic images (flags), which, when clicked on, replace this
file with translated files. Note that an auto-translation programme was
originally used to generate the foreign language in these files; however,
Jazz Services was contacted by French and German visitors to the site
who were so appalled by the translation that they offered their own
translations for free! Since the site was originally designed (one hopes),
translation software has improved somewhat. Notice here both the ALT
attribute (which brings up the text when the mouse goes over the image)
and the HSPACE attribute (which gives a space of 4 pixels between the
image and anything to its sides) – there is also a VSPACE attribute which
does the same above and below
Jazz is rich in history and culture, yet it is also …
# the text itself
… +44 (0) 207 405 0828 (fax)<BR>
<P><B>Email</B><BR>
<A HREF="mailto:admin@jazzservices.org.uk">
admin@jazzservices.org.uk</A> (general)<BR> …
# some way on, we get to email information about the company: notice the
format for displaying an email address as opposed to an ordinary
hyperlink – the HREF tag points to the email address but with mailto:
added in front. This means that when the user clicks on this, it is
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automatically recognised as an email address and (hopefully) the user’s

email programme is invoked, putting the email address in the “TO” section
of the email.
<P>If you are not viewing all frames, <A
HREF="../index.htm" TARGET="_BLANK"
onmouseover="window.status='GO TO THE JAZZ SITE OPENING
PAGE'; return true;">click here</A> to view the Jazz
Services home page.<TD></TR>
</TABLE>
# a very important piece of code here: because the user may have been
provided with a link to this file only (perhaps via a search engine) and not
the full frameset of the site, this enables them to click and view all the
frames of the site. Additionally, the code includes the useful attribute
“TARGET=’_blank’” which opens the full site in a new window rather than
the same window so that they have both this text available in one browser
window and the full site frames in another. Another point to mention is
that the “onmouseover…return true” section gives them additional
information about what they can do on the status bar (the strip at the
bottom of the window): an additional advantage of using the status bar in
this way is that it prevents the user from seeing the exact location of the
file they are choosing because all they see is the message you choose
here.
</BODY></HTML>
Style Sheets
As mentioned earlier, for small sites you might include all common font,
paragraph, colour and other attributes for web pages individually on each page,
but to maintain a consistency across a site and generally make life easier,
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) allow you to identify formatting which can be
used across any number of HTML files.
As we just saw, the reference to a style sheet is simple, made in the HEAD
section before the BODY starts, e.g.:
<LINK REL="STYLESHEET" HREF="../styles/about.css"
TYPE="text/css">
In this case, all stylesheets are stored in a folder called “styles”: you may need a
number of different stylesheets depending on the formatting you need for
different sections of your site. Stylesheets are text files, but they have the
extension “.css”. Below is a stylesheet (in full) for the file we looked at in the
last section:
H1 { font-family: "Comic Sans MS", Geneva,
Verdana, Arial, sans-serif;
font-size: 19pt;
vertical-align: top;
line-height: 1.2;
color: #FFA500 }
font-size: 15pt;
line-height: 1.0;
color: #FFA500 }
H4 { font-family: Geneva, Verdana, Arial, sans-
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serif;
font-size: 7pt }
TABLE { font-family: Geneva, Verdana, Arial, sans-
serif;
font-size: 11pt }
HR { height: 1px;
color: #FFA500 }
BODY { background:
url("http://www.jazzservices.org.uk/com/jsbg3.gif") scroll;
background-image:
url("http://www.jazzservices.org.uk/com/jsbg3.gif") }
Stylesheets can be a lot more complex than this one, which simply identifies
attributes for the major components of the HTML files which refer to it. One
characteristic of a style sheet is that, like some programming languages but
unlike HTML, it incorporates round brackets (“{“ and “}”).
So, for an HTML file which uses this stylesheet, if the tag <H1> is used in the
file, it looks at the stylesheet and discovers:
font-size: 19pt;
line-height: 1.2;
color: #FFA500 }
When the user’s browser comes to render text with the <H1> tag, it will look at
the list of fonts and choose the first one it recognises and use it. “Comic Sans
MS” has quotes round it because there are spaces in the font name; “Geneva”
is there for Macs, and “sans-serif” as a last resort. The other attributes are self-
explanatory.
The BODY section specifies a graphic that should appear behind it.
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THE MUSICIAN AND THE INTERNET

You and the Internet; The Internet and You

A Jazz Services publication in association with

THE MUSICIAN AND THE INTERNET

A Jazz Services publication in association with

Jazz Services acknowledges the financial assistance of the

12.8 Advanced HTML Design 41

Appendix: The Jazz Site

1. ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ISP Internet Service Provider, a company which allows

4. Part One: YOU AND THE INTERNET

5. WHAT YOU NEED

5.2 Computer Hardware

5.3 Computer Software

5.4 Internet Service Provider (ISP)

6.2 Buy a Used Computer

6.3 Build Your Own

6.5 Buy From a Retailer

ECONOMY MID-PRICE HIGH SPEC

What level of support do you require?

7.1 Getting Started

7.3 Some Tips

8. PUBLIC COMPUTER ACCESS

8.2 Libraries and Public Organisations

8.3 Cyber cafés

www.cybercafes.com/ - UK and World cybercafes

9.1 Bandwidth and Costs

Type Speed Approximate Cost

9.3 Reliability and Support/Cost

9.4 Which ISP?

10. USING THE INTERNET

10.2 BROWSING THE INTERNET

Alta Vista uk.altavista.com

Yellow Pages www.yell.co.uk

Also, look at www.powersearch.com or www.metasearch.com who will query

10.3 ELECTRONIC MAIL

Some Email Tips

11. Part Two: THE INTERNET AND YOU

12. SETTING UP A WEB SITE

12.2 Domains and Addresses

12.3 Using a Web Designer

! whether you have the time or inclination to do it yourself

12.4 HTML Tools

12.5 The Components of HTML

<H1>…</H1> Heading 1 style – defaults to user’s setting

1 The HTML for this would be:

12.6 HTML Designing

As we have mentioned, a majority of web pages are designed using a table

ones - allow you to save in these formats. They must be at a resolution of 72

Red1 Red2 Red3 Red4 Pink1 Pink2 Pink3 Pink4

Mauve1 Mauve2 Mauve3 Mauve4 Lilac1 Lilac2 Lilac3 Lilac4

Purple1 Purple2 Purple3 Purple4 Violet1 Violet2 Violet3 Violet4

L.Blue1 L.Blue2 L.Blue3 L.Blue4 D.Blue1 D.Blue2 D.Blue3 D.Blue4

L.Green1 L.Green2 L.Green3 L.Green4 D.Green1 D.Green2 D.Green3 D.Green4

Olive1 Olive2 Olive3 Olive4 Yellow1 Yellow2 Yellow3 Yellow4

Orange1 Orange2 Orange3 Orange4 Brown1 Brown2 Brown3 Brown4

Grey1 Grey2 Grey3 Grey4 White Black

Other attributes you have to pick up as you go along, there’s a generous

12.8 Advanced HTML Design

www.planetsourcecode.com/ - comprehensive coding samples for the advanced

12.9 HTML Tricks and Tips

13. UPLOADING YOUR SITE - FTP

The key fields here are: