These are the actual pieces of our team page from this spring, with our real schedule and our real roster, first names and numbers only. Every gray box is HTML you can copy. Under each box is what it looks like on the page.

How to copy a box: drag across the code with your mouse to highlight it, hold down Ctrl and press C, then click in Notepad and hold down Ctrl and press V. When you save in Notepad, change "Save as type" to All Files and type the name as index.html. Otherwise Notepad helpfully names it index.html.txt and your page won't show up. That one cost me an evening.

THE WHOLE PAGE, IN ORDER

Here's the skeleton. Each line in parentheses is where one of the pieces below goes. Keep them in this order. It's the order parents look for things.

<html>
<head>
<title>Orioles - 11/12
 Baseball</title>
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<h2>Orioles</h2>

(rain-out line goes here)
(schedule goes here)
(snacks and carpools here)
(roster goes here)
(party, when it's time)

<p>Questions? E-mail Coach
Joe.</p>
</body>
</html>

1. THE RAIN-OUT LINE

Two versions. Keep both in a file on your computer at work and paste in the one you need. Change the day, the date and the time you updated it. Take it off the page entirely on days when there's no game, so nobody gets confused by an old one.

When it's on:

<table border="2"
 cellpadding="8" cellspacing="0"
 width="100%" bgcolor="#CCFFCC">
<tr><td align="center">
<font size="5"><b>TONIGHT,
THU. 5/20: GAME IS ON
</b></font><br>
Be at the field by 5:15.
Updated 2:40 p.m.
</td></tr></table>

When it's off:

<table border="2"
 cellpadding="8" cellspacing="0"
 width="100%" bgcolor="#FFFF66">
<tr><td align="center">
<font size="5"><b>TONIGHT,
TUE. 5/18: POSTPONED
</b></font><br>
Fields are closed. Makeup
date to come.
Updated 2:45 p.m.
</td></tr></table>

Green for on, yellow for off. After a season, parents can tell from across the room which one it is before they can read it.

2. THE SCHEDULE

One row per game. Here are the top and the first two games. To add a game, copy everything from one <tr> down through its </tr>, paste it right under, and change what's inside. The </table> goes after the last game. Don't forget it. Netscape won't show a table at all without it.

<table border="1"
 cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0"
 width="100%">
<tr bgcolor="#CCFFCC">
<th>Day</th><th>Time</th>
<th>Game</th><th>Where</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Sat. 4/17</td>
<td>10:00</td>
<td>vs. Cubs</td>
<td>Field 2, Township Park.
Route 33 east past the Wawa,
right on Mill Road, park by
the tennis courts.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Tue. 4/20</td>
<td>6:00</td>
<td>at Reds</td>
<td>Memorial Field. Route 130
south to the diner, left at
the light, field is behind
the VFW.</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>Schedule changed 4/12.</p>

And here's what our first four games looked like on the page:

That last line is the date you last changed anything in the schedule. When the copy on somebody's refrigerator says 4/12 and the page says 5/3, they know to print a new one.

3. THE ROSTER

First name and number. Put them in number order, because that's how parents find their kid in the scorebook and on the field.

<table border="1"
 cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0">
<tr bgcolor="#CCFFCC">
<th>#</th><th>Player</th></tr>
<tr><td>2</td><td>Byron</td></tr>
<tr><td>4</td><td>Josue</td></tr>
<tr><td>5</td><td>Terry</td></tr>
<tr><td>7</td><td>Allen</td></tr>
<tr><td>9</td><td>Tyler</td></tr>
<tr><td>11</td><td>Raymond</td></tr>
<tr><td>12</td><td>Seth</td></tr>
<tr><td>14</td><td>Clinton</td></tr>
<tr><td>16</td><td>Alex</td></tr>
<tr><td>21</td><td>Shawn</td></tr>
<tr><td>23</td><td>Audrey</td></tr>
<tr><td>24</td><td>George</td></tr>
</table>

Twelve kids. Audrey was the only girl in the division this year and led the team in walks, which I'd put on the page if I put that sort of thing on the page. Allen, number 7, is mine. He'd like you to know he picked the number himself, after his grandfather's.

A FEW LAST THINGS

Test it before you tell anybody. Look at the page on your computer at home and on one at work, and if one of them has Netscape and the other has Internet Explorer, even better. Click every link. Then send the address to your families.

Tell them on paper. Put the page's address on the paper you hand out at the first practice, right under the phone list. Half the parents will never type it in. The other half will be checking it at 2:59 every game day for two months.

Ask me. If you get stuck, e-mail me with your page's address and what's wrong. I'll look at lunch.