Use

To write, maintain and improve your own web of linked browser pages is easy but you need a few things:

  1. resources

    Never start a browser page from scratch. YOW Free Sample (YFS) is a collection of well constructed browser pages. Copy and modify YFS pages to create your pages.

    Install YOW Free Sample two or more times on your computer. First install your reference copy. Do not change this. It is your reference on your computer. Keep it. Look at it. Copy pages from it.

    Next install YOW Free Sample to a folder for your pages. Edit, copy and delete pages in this install. Turn these pages into your pages. You repeat this for each separate web of pages you create.

    Depending on how you like to work another install of YOW Free Sample can be a test "sandbox". Make changes here to learn. These pages are not for keeping or presentation.

  2. tools

    Amaya, Git and Tortoise Git are the tools.

  3. knowledge

    Learn to edit and write HTML pages and simple CSS files with Amaya.

    Learn how to keep and use a history of changes to your pages. Tortoise Git makes this use of Git quick to start and learn.

  4. organization

    YFS provides organization at several levels.

    1. Each page is rather plain HTML. Plain is good. It is not so hard to understand when you look at it in a text editor.
    2. YFS pages have a common format generally kept in CSS files.
    3. YFS pages are various kinds of pages like lists, calendars, pages with pictures and pages with slide shows.
    4. The hard bits like how to sort a list or run a slide show are in Javascript libraries you use but do not edit or change.
    5. Page to page YFS is an index page with topics pages. These pages have relative links between them.
    6. The YFS page change history is a Git repository installed with YFS.
    7. Your change history starts when you commit your changes to the Git repository.
    8. By cloning Git repositories and push and pulling changes between the repositories you can have your pages on several computers for editing, viewing, publishing and backup.

    None of this organization provided by YFS uses or requires servers. This makes installing YFS easier primarily by not providing support for controlled access (login support), private communcation (login passwords for example) or database support (dynamic data, weather information or purchase information for example). You can still potentially have these items for your pages but they must be provided by something in addition to YFS.

Edit your copy of YOW Free Sample pages with Amaya to make the pages your own. Use Git with Tortoise Git to keep a history of your changes.

Hello Git is a quick example of using Git with Tortoise Git. If you still need to be convinced that version control with Git is helpful read Git for you.