How to build a website

[DarlingNikki]

I want to make a website for myself. Nothing fancy, just a couple of photos, a couple of essays, and links to all my (non Lit) online publications.

I know I can pay someone for this, but I would like to do it myself.

Can someone please recommend a simple, step-by-step book or website? Will I need to buy software? Webhosting services?

 

[Dionysus2003]

You can use www.geocities.com - they give free hosting to your website. If you have a yahoo account you can use that.

Or do a google search on free web hosting.

To make a site you have several options. One is to use the geocities site-builder, where you put in images and text in ready-made pages.
You can also download Dreamweaver. You get a free trial-period of 30 days on the software, which should be enough time to learn to use it and build. You can also download free tutorials for Dreamweaver online. With those you get a nice practice in using the program and building sites.

You also have Microsoft Frontpage, but that one I don't like, so I won't recommend it

It should not be needed to pay anyone to make a site. With a little time and patience you are able to do it yourself

Good luck

 

[Dionysus2003]

The board was hanging - and I pressed a couple of times too much...sorry

 

[Dionysus2003]

The board was hanging - and I pressed a couple of times too much...sorry

 

[DarlingNikki]

Thanks, I will check these out when I get home from work!

 

[MMorJon]

if your looking to learn HTML code let me know.....I did my first and second homepages all in HTML.

 

[Bobmi357]

I am a bit of a purist and normally shun most wysiwyg html editors. But for a simple homepage, the 30 day trial of dreamweaver should fit the bill for you.

If on the other hand you want to do it all using html, then I'd suggest picking up a copy of FirstPage 2000 from evrsoft.com. Its free, no time limit or annoying "BUY ME!" messages, and is one of the most comprehensive pure html editors I've seen in my 10yrs of building websites professionally.

Geocities is probably the best choice for free homepage space, just never consider it if you hope to run a business site on them.

 

[freddyandeddy]

The Dreamweaver trial is the best way to start, although all of the suggestions here will work. When we started our site 2 1/2 years ago, we too just wanted a couple of pages with some photos, but it quickly grew into a behemoth that now consumes huge amounts of our time. Starting with Frontpage, we have transitioned slowly to Dreamweaver and are very happy about it. If you want really good cheap hosting provider, check out www.vmdomain.com. You can get a whole year for 20-30 bucks and they're really casual about bandwidth and disk space and do not require any advertising like Geocities and some of the more prominent free services.

 

[Weird Harold]

Can someone please recommend a simple, step-by-step book or website? Will I need to buy software? Webhosting services?

Check with your ISP to see if "personal webspace" or a "Personal Webpage" is included in your service. You may already be paying for all the webhosting you'll need.

 

[ESH419]

I do all my web hosting with Angelfire - www.angelfire.com and sometimes Tripod - www.tripod.com - both are owned by Lycos.

Personally i find their banner adds less annoying than those pop up and down things in the corner of Geocities web pages. If you go into Angelfire there are three ways to put pages up.

1. Upload anything you make on your own computer. So if you like to use Microsoft Frontpage or Dreamweaver all ya gotta do is upload and make sure everything is in the right folder on Angelfire.

2. Use the Angelfire templates. They are like big forms. You type in your headlines, your links, text, pictures, all that stuff. And Angelfire will pump out the page for you. There's limited customization in the styles but not much. This is for people who don't want to learn to use a program but don't want to do HTML code either.

3. Type out the HTML code. Angelfire has tutorials on how to do this although i don't know how well they are. I learned all my HTML off a website that doesn't exist anymore.

The other cool thing about Angelfire is that you can use their free service, but if you want a .com or more file space or things like that, you can upgrade to a pay service and it's not that expencive. I'm getting my .com with more bandwidth and disk space than i can use along with email accounts for only 9 bucks a month.

Anyways. hope this was helpful

 

[flawed_ethics]

The basics of HTML are pretty simple. If you understand the flags for bold and italics from posting on Lit, then you're already on the right track.

I used HTML Goodies when I was learning. They cover a lot, but the sidebar on the left has a section on Tutorials, where they cover the simple things, like tags for images, creating tables, and such.

Whichever method you choose, good luck and have fun!

 

[DarlingNikki]

Wow, a lot of information and it sounds helpful. I will check into it all and try to figure out what I'm going to do. Thank you!