How to make your own website
Introduction
This page gives you the basic pointers to information you need to start making your own websites.
Before you start, you should know that learning how to make sites IS a lot of work, and you will need to spend considerable time and effort in order to master it. Therefore, if you are looking to one-time only create a site for your company or other purpose, we recommend that you save yourself considerable time and effort and avail yourself of our client-friendly and economically priced webdesign services. However, if you are considering a career as a professional site designer or aspire to start producing your own websites on an ongoing basis and you are willing to put the time and effort in, we have provided you here with some very useful information and resources to get started.
What you need to know to get started
The basic structure of websites is contained in codes that are written in a coding language called HTML. HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language ("hyper text" essentially means "links") and uses "tags" (pieces of code that you sort of "tag" onto text to indicate what role that piece of text plays in the overall structure of the webpage, i.e. a paragraph, a heading, link, etc). Click on the "View" menu in the left hand corner of your current screen, and then click on "Source code". That's what HTML looks like.
In order to make websites, you will need to learn HTML. There are also WYSIWYG programs available (What You See is What You Get) that allow you to make websites without knowing any HTML code - they basically generate the code for you, but this code tends to be very complicated and extremely difficult for you or another to adjust later should that be necessary. In making professional-looking websites that are also easy in use, there is really no substitute for learning HTML yourself so you are in full control of your sites.
At www.w3schools.com, the most comprehensive internet tutorial and reference site that we know of, you will find a recommended free on-line tutorial you can use to learn HTML on a good gradient and with lots of examples. Useful note: In learning HTML, don't get to fond about the layout mark-up tags and attributes, such as the "font" tag and the background color attribute. After learning HTML, you will find out that there is another language you need to learn to take care of these things for a professional result.
Okay, so now you have a basic idea of how HTML works. You have learned that in order to make a webpage, you need a basic text editor program to write the code, and a browser to view the result. In order to speed things up a little bit you can also use a webdesign program, from simple ones to very advanced ones (such as Frontpage or Dreamweaver). But to start with, you can download a simple Free HTML Editor program here: www.coffeecup.com. This program allows you to switch back and forth between the code and the result with the click of a button.
After you get some practice at this, the next coding language you need to learn is CSS, "Cascading Style Sheets". This technology is explained and can be learned in the CSS Tutorial of w3schools.com which you can find here. Once you have that down, we suggest you get some practice in that with your HTML Editor program.
If you want to do more fancy things with your website you can also do the Javascript Tutorial (which is another coding language that is used to make sites more dynamic, i.e. create interchange with the user. However, you now know enough to make a basic professional looking site.
So when you have a site, how do you publish it on the web? First you need a domain name (assigned web "address" where your site will be able to be located by other computers). You much register a domain name, which costs between about 15 to 35 dollars per year, for example with Network Solutions or Domain Name Registration. Next, you need webhosting (your web pages must be uploaded onto a large computer called a server where other computers will be able to access them). This service is provided by webhosting companies. We have been using Total Choice Hosting for USA-based websites and can highly recommend them, as their service is fast, they provide numerous extra's and we have never experienced a problem with their servers. If your target-group is located in a foreign country however, we recommend that you find hosting with a company located in that country as from our experience, it will be easier for your website to be found by that country's local search engines that way. When choosing a hosting company, do pay attention to what services they provide and whether or not they have features such as viewing statistics of your website (a must if you want to keep control of it) and support PHP/ASP which are necessary for certain function such as emailing forms from the website to your email address.
In order to upload your website you need a program called an "FTP client", which allows you to upload your website to the server of your hosting company. There are several different ones which you can find by looking up "FTP client" in a search engine - an FTP client we like to use for example is Smart FTP, which is easy to figure out and easy to use. You upload your files to the folder in the server that says "public html" and you upload your images to the "images" folder (or create one if you need to). If you do use Total Choice Hosting, they also have help pages where you can find information about how to upload. Your site is now on the web!
Why would we tell you all of this?
The above is valuable and hardwon information. We are a webdesign service. Why are we telling you exactly how you can do it all yourself?
Well, first of all, as mentioned earlier, learning these techniques and subsequently making a site from scratch to finished product IS work. If you are only looking one-time for a site for yourself or your company to promote your services and get on with your business, you will probably have a look through these references, discover that it DOES take a lot of work and study to be able to do it, and still choose to have your site created and published by someone who knows the score.
Secondly, if you do happen to be a webmaster-to-be and are already determined to take the time and effort to learn how to make websites yourself then you will find out how to do it anyway. The information is all out there on the net - for free if you like. We have just put it together in an orderly manner saving you some hours in gathering the data. And why not? Our services are aimed at artists and small business owners gaining control of their own communication lines through the Internet. We like to help those people and have no stake in keeping people ignorant - that's why we also provide full explanation to our clients and information about how to update their own sites. By providing you with the information on this page and our Free Keyword Research Service, we hope you will like this site enough to tell your family and friends about it, and maybe they will one day be in need of webdesign services.
Resources
www.w3schools.com Free web tutorials
www.coffeecup.com Free HTML Editor and other webdesign software
www.networksolutions.com Network Solutions - domain name registration
www.dotdnr.com Domain Name Registration
www.totalchoicehosting.com Total Choice Hosting - web hosting
www.smartftp.com Smart FTP - FTP client
