Tips on Building Your Own Website

I decided to use that headline because it's true. Building your own website is really easier to use than Microsoft Word. You may hear all these things about coding languages and different techniques, but don't let them cloud your vision. The fact is there are many different ways to make a website, and some ways are much easier than others.

I would start off by search Google for some good free websites that will teach you HTML. YOU DO NOT NEED TO MEMORIZE HTML! Just learn the basics, the way things are formatted. You can practice the HTML you learn using Notepad, available with any version of Windows released in the past 15 years. Just save your code as .htm or .html and then open the file in your internet browser (you can paste the file path right into the address bar).

After you learn the basics, I recommend purchasing a WYSIWYG webpage builder. You may even be able to find some good WYSIWYG programs for free. WYSIWYG stands for What You See is What You Get. They allow you to make webpages in the same way you would make a page with graphics in Word or Powerpoint, and they handle all the code for you. So why do I want you to learn some HTML basics? Because these editors sometimes do funny things, and we can correct those things with just a small amount of HTML knowledge. The WYSIWYG program I recommend is Macromedia Dreamweaver, but it is kind of expensive. You might want to purchase a Macromedia Studio MX package that will have an advanced photo editor similar to Photoshop, as you will save lots of money over buying them seperately.

Once you make your website you'll want to put it on the internet. I recommend paying a company to host it for you. Here is a page that reviews some different website hosts. You'll purchase your own domain name, and you can store your website on their computers, called servers. You can even store other files not related to your website there, such as pictures. Instead of having to email pictures of your brand new car to your friends you can just put them on your server space and send them the picture's address on the web (called a url).

Building A Website is Not Hard