Publishing on the Web

The Explosive Growth of Web Publishing

Why Such A High Rate of Growth?

What are you going to publish?

What Do You Need?

What Must You Learn?

Some Example Web Sites

Anyone can learn how to publish information on the Web. Starting with a simple home page on your connection provider's server, you can progressively work your way up even to running your own server through a dedicated Internet connection. You can teach yourself about Web publishing by building a site on your own hard drive, and browsing it directly. It's just a matter of time and persistence.

The Explosive Growth of Web Publishing

Although it was originally designed for academic and scientific research, the Web has come to be used for far more than that. Now, you can find everything from small newsletters and on line poetry, to major publications including newspapers and magazines. You can shop the Web for software, computers, books, clothing, real estate and much more. You can even order pizza!

LEFT: The number of Web servers has increased rapidly, as this graph shows. Note that each server can carry many sites.

Source: Matthew Gray, mkgray@netgen.com

The growth of the Web has been spectacular:

From only 130 Web servers in June of 1993, there were 11,576 servers by December, 1994.

Sun Microsystems Inc., a leading Unix computer manufacturer, estimated that by the end of February 1995:

there were more than 27,000 separate Web sites (a server can carry more than one site), and

the number of Web sites was doubling every 53 days.

Research shows there are now over five million documents stored on Web servers, a figure that many believe will double within the first six months of 1995.

Why Such A High Rate of Growth?

Without a doubt, the World Wide Web has become a hot, new medium for global electronic publishing. Why this explosion in popularity of the Web? There are several main reasons:

the Web's ability to offer hypertext and hypermedia

the flexibility and comprehensiveness of Web Internet services

the relatively low cost of setting up a Web publishing site

the complete computerization of information and graphics

free, easy-to-use and widely-available Web browsers, and

the huge growth in the number of new Internet users.

What are your interests? -- this is the number one issue.

Will this be a hobby, or do you want to grow it into a business?

Can you afford to devote your time and put financial resources into it?

Is the information already available or will you be generating it yourself?

Is enough happening in that area of interest to warrant such a site?

Can can attract other people with the same interests to your Web site?

The answers to these and other questions are crucial to your success as a Web publisher.

What Do You Need?

Whatever topic you choose, the equipment and techniques you will be the same. To browse the Web, you will need:

an Intel 386 or 486 computer with at least 4Mb of RAM to runs Windows 3.1, or

an Apple Macintosh computer with at least a 68020 processor and 4Mb of RAM

at least a 14.4 Kbps, V.32bis modem or fax modem (28.8Kbps V.34 is better)

a telephone line to call a local Internet connection provider (an extra line helps)

a SLIP or PPP account with a local connection provider.

In addition to your equipment, you must:

become familiar with the Internet in general, and how the various Internet services work.

learn the basics of HTML so you can create your own Web pages.

understand the different file formats, and how to convert files between them.

gain an understanding of Web site design.

You'll learn all of this as you continue through this on line course -- so carry on!

Some Example Web Sites

A wide variety of publications and services can be found on the Web:

Vancouver Village, a city magazine

A comprehensive list of Canadian Web sites

On to the Summary

Go to Assignment 3

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