Upper Left
Let's start to customize your website and begin in the upper left corner. The upper left corner of a website is usually where the logo of your business or website would go. This is just a suggestion. Remember, it's your site, make it the way you want it. In this course, we are going to put a logo here to demonstrate how it's done.
The logo is the symbol or image associated with a website and/or business. It will tell visitors who you are with just a quick glance. If the website is for a business the logo should be the same image that is on the stationary and business cards. A website is, after all, the international extension of what you do. If this site is not for a business, that is ok, as long as the image represents what the website is about.
Before we get into making a logo, let's look at the files in the "includes" folder. Open up HomeSite (or an HTML Editor). Then open the "includes" folder that is in your website folder on the desktop. Notice that in this folder, most of the files end with ".inc.php". This indicates that these files are included into each page of the website. Having separate includes files make updating your website a whole lot easier as the site grows.
For instance, say a year from now the logo needs to be changed. If there wasn't an includes file, the code of every single webpage of the website would have to be changed. With an includes file, the only thing that would need to be changed is the "upperleft.inc.php" file. Once this file is changed it will update every single webpage of your website. And let's face it; updating one file is much easier then updating twenty of them.
Noticed that all of the files end in ".php", not ".html". Php can do much more than basic html and php recognizes the html language. By saving the file that are created in php, as the website grows and neat little php scripts are added, the file names and links can remain the same and automatically work together.
The only downside to saving the files as php is that the files can't be seen working together until they are uploaded to the hosting server because php is what is called a server side language. This means that it takes a web hosting server, like a hosting company, to translate and properly display the files. This is a small issue considering the files need to be uploaded to the hosting server anyways.
Ok, enough of that, let's look at getting a logo image together for uploading.
