Windows version
This walk through assumes that your web site is essentially the first thing you’ve used your computer for. For many users, the level of detail here may be rather more than you need. For others, hopefully it will help to build up your confidence!
These are the steps we’re going to take:
Check the terminology
The computer industry has given us more new words than most. The good news is that you only need to know a few to be able to add your ICRA PICS label.
- HTML Source File Most pages on the internet, however simple or complicated, are written in a common language known as HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language since you asked!) Some pages may use additional computer languages and there are important variations but at a basic level, you can assume that even the most complex site has HTML at its heart. Right click anywhere in this block of text and select [View Source] to see the HTML source code for this page – then close it again.
Scary? It needn’t be – most of it you can ignore!
- ICRA PICS label This is the piece of HTML code we sent you along with your Link tag. It will look something like this:
In HTML terms, this is known as a Meta Tag. There are several meta tags in a typical web page which carry information such as the language in which the page is written, the title etc.
- Windows Notepad This is the basic “text editor” which comes with every copy of Windows. You can access it from the accessories section of the Start Menu. In effect, it is a very simple word processor. We’re going to use this simple program so that we are sure that the software is not going to “make changes all by itself.” Notepad isn’t clever enough to do that!
Locating your HTML source file
Launch Windows Notepad, click the [File] Menu and select [Open]. This will bring up the window below:
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Notepad usually begins by looking in the “My Documents” folder. There you will see the various folders on your system. Navigate your way to the folder which contains the files you’ve been working on to create your web site. We can’t be more specific than that – everyone organizes their folders in different ways.
Like most programs, Notepad’s Open dialogue only shows the files which it created – Text Documents – and you may not have any of those. In the image below, Notepad is looking at the folder which contains all the English language files for an earlier version of this site.
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We need it to show all files. To do this, click the arrow to the right of the highlighted box and you’ll see the two options – Text Documents and All Files, as shown below:
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Click “All Files” and you will see – you guessed it – all the files in that folder, including the important HTML files you’re after. See below:
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You should have a file called either index.htm or index.html. This is the file which is first to open when someone visits your site. Some programs may call it default.htm. Either way, that’s the one to open. You will then see a load of HTML, similar to (but not the same as) that shown below:
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We’ve highlighted the important part. This is called the Head section. Notice it begins with and ends with . We need to make a bit of space for our ICRA PICS label. In this example below, we clicked at the end of the line which contains the page’s title and then pressed [Enter] to insert a new line.
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You can put this new line ANYWHERE in the HEAD section.
Leave this window open while going on to the next section.
Copy and paste the ICRA PICS label
Open up the e-mail we sent you containing the ICRA PICS label (it was with the Link tag). (Left) click the mouse just in front of the opening “”. This will highlight the whole tag. On the keyboard, press Ctrl+C (both keys together). This is a standard Windows operation which copies whatever is highlighted into a special part of the computer’s memory called the Clipboard.
Now go back to the Notepad file you have open and click on the empty line. Press Ctrl+V (both keys together). This is the standard Windows operation which pastes whatever is in the Clipboard into wherever you have the cursor in the active Window).
You should see something like this:
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And that’s all you have to do. Save and close the file and then upload to your site in the way you are used to.
Further support
There are as many ways of creating a web site as there are web sites. It is therefore simply not possible to provide a complete description which would cover any and all eventualities. This walk through is about as generic as we can make it. So, if you are left confused then we suggest you take the following action:
- Buy in some nice coffee and/or wine
- Perhaps add a few bowls of nuts, crispy snacks and dips, chocolates etc.
- Think about your friends and how nice it would be to see them again – especially the ones who are perhaps more confident on the computer than you
- Ask them over…