I’m not much when in comes to the ins-and-outs of computers — Iwouldn’t know a byte if it bit me — but I’m learning.

About this time last year I bought one of those oddly-shaped,brightly-colored computers that were advertised along the lines of”you bring it home; you take it out of the box; you plug it in;you’re online.” It was about that simple. I like simple.

So far, I’ve perfected the art of e-mailing my sister, one of mybrothers and friends in various parts of the world, including oneon the second floor of the Inez Hotel. That’s a real stretch sinceI live on the third floor.

And, I’ve been shopping on Amazon and done some bidding on eBay,which is pretty harmless stuff. Offline, I play Solitaire (eventhough you can’t cheat), Five Card Draw and Omaha Hold ‘Em. I’mstill working on the ‘you gotta know when to hold ’em, know when tofold ’em’ part.

I feel like I took a giant step into the real computer worldthis week when I made a web page for Habitat For Humanity ofLincoln County. The site is pretty basic right now, but I hope toadd some photos in the coming weeks.

I couldn’t believe how easy this was — thanks to some help Igot from Homer Richardson, who did a page for Brookhaven Beautiful.Both sites can be found in the Community Links of The DAILYLEADER’s online edition, www.dailyleader.com

The current Habitat web page is actually the second version.When I logged on to the Brookhaven Beautiful site and saw thatHomer had put color on that one, I asked his guidance on how to dothe same.

You see, putting color or special emphasis on text requiressomething called Hypertext Markup Language, or HTML coding. I don’tknow HTML coding from a hole in the ground, but that’s the languagecomputer browsers speak. Homer came to the rescue.

Basically, he told me, design the copy as you want it to look –by putting text in color, or bold type or italic — in a wordprocessing program such as Microsoft Word or Clarisworks. Save yourwork as HTML (this puts in all the codes for you), copy it and thenpaste it onto the form on The DAILY LEADER’s site.

That’s simple, and like I said, I like simple. It also workedlike a charm.

If you are interested in doing a web page for your church ornon-profit group, click on the Community Links and follow thestep-by-step directions. You’ll also find a Web Page DevelopmentGuide and some Frequently Asked Questions that provide help.

You don’t have to worry about anybody coming in and changingyour site, either. They are all password secure.

So far, only Habitat and Brookhaven Beautiful have taken up TheDAILY LEADER’s offer to host websites, but any church or non-profitorganization can use the service — and it’s free.

Other than creating web pages, you can do some other things atThe DAILY LEADER site, like submit wedding or engagementannouncements, events for the Community or Church Calendars, orpost a comment. Of course, you can also read news and sports.

See you online!

Write to Nanette Laster at P.O. Box 551, Brookhaven, Miss.39602, send faxes to 833-6714, or e-mail to nlaster@telepak.net.She’d love to hear from you.