After you have finished the design of your site, it is time to begin creating actual HTML pages! Start by creating a "skeleton site" on your computer's hard disk.

Basically, this consists of an empty directory or folder with some meaningful name, like "www" or "web". If you maintain multiple sites, as I do, and you use an operating system that supports long folder names, you may wish to name each site's local folder with the name of the site. For instance, I store the local copy of the Fourth Corner Systems site in a folder called "4th.com" on my disk.

Now use your text editor to create your home page. Open a new file and save it as "index.html" in the folder you just created. (Note that some web servers use "default.htm", "index.htm", or "default.asp" as the index document -- ask your Internet Service Provider which name is correct for your site. "index.html" works with the most popular servers on most ISPs.) Put some simple HTML code, such as the code from the example given earlier, into the text editor and save the new file.

Now, start your browser and open the file (from your hard disk) that you just created. On a graphical operating system, you can usually do this by choosing "File" on the main menu and then "Open" from the submenu.

As you open the file, you will see that your browser displays this file from your hard disk just as if it were a web site. There are a few differences in the way things work, which we will discuss later, but for basic testing the two environments are close enough.

Congratulations! Primitive though it is, you now have a web site under construction.