Intro

I have made some assumptions about you, so let me be up front.

• I assume coding "HTML" by hand is completely foreign to you.
• I assume that you just want to type in a little, and get your website on the internet.
• I assume you like pictures.

Therefore, I am going to really be concrete when writing this, so forgive me if this is kept really simple. And forgive me when I am not too clear, too. But I will try to keep this direct.

Software you will need

A Text Editor. (OK, you can use a graphical editor, but they may not leave things exactly as they are. Word 97 gave up on the index.html page, it said it was too complex. Open Office's html editor struggles with the index.html page, while Netcape 7.1 Composer did not mangle the index page too bad). While Windows' notepad will work as your html text editor, I highly recommend Crimson Editor, the professional source editor. This free software is great for editing web pages because it supports syntax highlighting. What is syntax highlighting? Check it out:

See all the colors? If I ask you to find Colonial View Baptist Church in the text (it appears in black in the Crimson Editor) it's just much easier to find. That's why I recommend it!

An image Editor. Mostly for editing, resizing and/or cropping images (digital pictures).

Other Stuff

Unless you plan to alter a lot of this template, you'll at least want:

• A digital picture of your church, preferably scaled to 184 pixels wide and 120 pixels tall.
• A digital picture of your pastor.
• A map to your church.

If you've got these, go ahead and replace the church picture in the images folder (it's called Church.jpg). Also replace the pastor's picture (Pastor.jpg) and Map image (Map.jpg). If you don't have these, then you'll need to replace them before sending them to your website.

Getting Started

If you look in this directory, you should find the following: two folders (images and template) and eight files (Christian.htm, Cross2.ico, How To Customize This Template.htm, index.html, Links.htm, Map.htm, quotes.js, and style.css). All the contents of the templates folder and this file "How To Customize This Template.htm" are not needed on your webserver. Before transfering these files to your webserver, you'll want to make a few changes (unless you're creating a Colonial View fan site).

Open index.html in your html/text editor

1. Look for every occurence of Colonial View Baptist Church and replace it with the name of your church. Crimson editor has a search and replace function in the search menu or look for this button on the toolbar: .
2. Look for every occurence of 1426 West Cemetery Road and replace it with your street number and name.
3. Look for every occurence of Cookeville, TN and replace it with the name of your city and state.
4. Look for every occurence of 38506 and replace it with your zipcode.
5. Look for every occurence of (931) 432-6363 and replace it with your phone number.
6. Look for every occurence of pastor@colonialview.com and replace it with your email address.
7. Look for every occurence of Al Gaspard and replace it with your pastor's name.

Repeat this process for Map.htm, Links.htm and Christian.htm.

Now you can make any other editing changes you would like to make and you have a completely ready-to-go website!

What Other Editing Changes Did I Mean?

If you have index.html open, look at this section, it's the real data of your website:

You'll probably want to personalize "Include a warm welcome..." (line 128) and change the event calendar on lines 140-150.

If you add new webpages, you can add links to them below line 116.

On Map.htm, you may want to add a picture of your church sign or link up driving directions.

On Links.htm you may want to add your own favorite links.

• HTML Tutorial - In W3School's HTML tutorial you will learn how to use HTML to create your own Web site. HTML is very easy to learn!
• NCSA Beginner's Guide to HTML

Good luck with your website and God bless you!