Build your own website
These days it seems that everyone from the Royal family to the bloke down the pub has their own website. If you are suffering from website envy and think it’s time you made your presence felt online, you might be pleasantly surprised by just how easy it is.
The thought of building a website from scratch can seem daunting and it’s easy to be put off by all the technical and creative issues involved. Depending on how you decide to go about it, though, you might not need any technical knowledge at all and some online website building services will even let you design your site and publish it free of charge.
In this feature we’ll set you on the road to cyber-space with the confidence and know-how necessary to create a great website. By the time you’ve finished reading this you should have a much clearer idea of all the processes involved and the online services available to help you. And the good news is that it doesn’t have to cost you a bean.
Behind the scenes
Almost all of the websites you view in a browser while surfing the web will feature pictures, graphics and animations alongside neatly arranged text on a web page. Behind all this lurks something called HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) which is the raw code that makes up every website and glues everything together.
The browser you use to surf the web - most of us use Internet Explorer as it’s bundled with Windows - translates that HTML code and displays what we would recognise as a web page, complete with all its component images and formatting.
To see what the HTML code of any website actually looks like, go to the View menu of your browser and select Source. Each line of the text displayed in the Notepad document that appears is a set of instructions referring to how a certain part of the page should look.
It’s essentially a blueprint of the layout of the web page. If it looks like gobbledegook to you, don’t worry. Nowadays you can build a perfectly good website without knowing a jot about HTML.
The web design software on the market makes the whole process very user friendly, working in the same way as a desktop publishing application that many of us will already be used to.
It’s just a question of editing your own text and adding the text and pictures to the blank page. The software will then convert the web page you have put together into HTML, ready for publication on the web. Most applications will also include a wizard to take you step-by-step through the process of launching your site online.
There’s little point in constructing a website if you have nowhere to publish it online. Every website on the internet has to have its own address, called a URL or a domain name. This is the line of text that starts with http:// in the address bar at the top of your browser.
The address guides the browser to a particular web page, which is stored on a computer or server, that allows access to the web pages stored on it on demand. This storage of web pages is known as hosting.
When you type www.computeractive.co.uk into your browser and hit return, for example, you are effectively requesting access to the Computeractive homepage from the server on which it is stored.
So if you want to publish a website online, you’ll need a web address and some space to store it on a server, both of which can be bought from a web hosting company such as Easyspace.
Building blocks
There are free website building and hosting services that will let you create your website entirely online so there’s no software to buy or learn how to use, and will provide you with a web address and space to store your website.
These services usually provide templates to help you put a website together and are a great option for building a site quickly and cheaply. The disadvantage of such free services, however, is that you won’t be able to tinker with page layouts, the number of web pages you can include in your website may be limited, and your site will feature intrusive banner and pop-up advertising.
These issues can often be overcome by upgrading to the service’s paid-for hosting option. Free website hosting and website creation are available at sites including Free Website Hosting and Free Web Sites.
A more conventional method of creating a website involves choosing and purchasing a domain name, signing up to a web hosting service to store the website, designing the site, and transferring it from your PC onto the web once it’s finished.
As we mentioned before, you can use the services of companies such as Easyspace to register and purchase a URL or domain name for a set period of time, usually three years.
These companies usually also offer some kind of hosting service that gives you a certain amount of space on a server to store your website. This will be measured in megabytes, with basic packages offering around 60Mb of space for about £30 per year. Shop around for the best deal, though.
How much space you’ll need to store your website will depend on how flashy you plan to make it. Then it’s a question of making a one-off payment for the domain name itself, and paying a monthly fee to the hosting service provider.
Wherever you purchase your website name from, ask the company to confirm that you have been listed as the administration contact for the domain name. This will make it easier to re-register in the future and make sure you keep your chosen name.
Now that so many people, businesses and organisations have their own websites, you may well find that the domain name or URL you want has already been snapped up. This is particularly true if you are looking for a domain name ending in.com.
Services such as Easyspace offer a search tool that scours the web to see if your chosen domain name is available, but you might have more luck searching for an alternative domain name ending such as .co.uk or .name.
When choosing a web hosting services provider, look for any additional benefits offered such as email accounts and free FTP (file transfer protocol) programs, which we’ll have a look at in just a minute.
Check whether you can pay for the service monthly or annually, and how much notice you have to give to cancel the service. Also bear in mind that you may already be paying for web space from your internet service provider (ISP) as part of an internet access package, so it’s worth checking this out first.
Grand designs
With a name for your site and somewhere to store it ticked off the checklist, it’s time to get down to the business of actually creating the site. Some kind of website creation application to help put your site together is essential.
These range from free products and simple text editors such as Notepad (go to the Start menu then select Programs and Accessories) to full-scale, layout-based, web-creation software that allows you to build a site, even if you don’t know anything about HTML but can at least use a word processor.
Microsoft Office or Word will let you create a very basic web page, but a more specialised web-creation application will simplify matters considerably. You can expect to pay a couple of hundred pounds for comprehensive web-creation suites such as Microsoft FrontPage, Macromedia Dreamweaver or NetObjects Fusion, and these require quite a bit of practice to use.
A better option if you’re just getting started is to invest in software such as Mindscape’s Web Creator 2, which you can pick up for around £20 and is much less daunting.
Websites aren’t just made up of text and pictures, though, and once you’ve found your feet, you may want to add elements such as a webcam, animations, a guest book or audio to your site.
Animation can either bring a website alive or turn it into a tacky disaster that makes the site incredibly slow to load. The trick is in the implementation.
We’re all familiar with those banner ads with changing text and images that most commercial websites use, but animation can be as simple as a button icon that changes when you pass your mouse cursor over it, or as clever as a series of frames that give the impression of movie footage.
While homepages crammed with complex animation can turn visitors away, a little of the simple stuff can be a major enhancement. Thankfully, features such as scrolling text, changing images and motion menu buttons are relatively easy to set up.
If you fancy adding some animated text to your website there are free tools available to do this, with no software to download, at 3D Textmaker.
The process of creating animated text is divided into five, easy-to-follow steps on the site. You can select the font, colour and text dimensions you want to use, as well as animation options that include rotating text and text that swings backwards and forwards or slides from side to side.
Another popular inclusion on many personal websites these days is a blog, a kind of online journal that the author of the website updates on a regular basis. If you’re interested in setting one up on your own site, one of the easiest ways to do this is to use a free blog hosting service such as that provided by Blog City and simply link to it from your own website.
You can even add images to your blog and there are loads of free tutorials on the site to help get you started. There’s a greater range of tools and features available if you upgrade to the paid-for service.
Show time
Once your virtual masterpiece is finished and ready to share with the rest of the online world it’s time to think about publishing it online. If you’ve used an online web creation service to put your site together, this will be a matter of simply clicking a few buttons.
If you’ve used a separate application to design the site yourself, on the other hand, the next step is to transfer your creation from the computer to your web space, which involves using an FTP application. This enables you to transfer large files to your web hosting service or ISP quickly and easily.
Software such as CuteFTP, Free FTP and Smart FTP will help you transfer or publish your website online. Some of these programs are available for free, but to use others you’ll have to pay a licence fee.
If you’re using a web creation program such as Dreamweaver or FrontPage, however, it’s likely that FTP functions are included, so you won’t need separate software.
Whether you use a dedicated FTP program, or the FTP facilities in a web-creation program, you’ll need to know some details concerning access to your web space. For starters, the web address you have acquired for your site is required to transfer files.
You’ll also have a user name and password for your web space, so only you can transfer and remove files. All of these details can be obtained from your web hosting service if you don’t have them to hand.
One of the most important parts of building a website is the testing stage. We can’t stress enough how crucial it is to try out your design, structure and any interactive elements as thoroughly as possible before you publish it.
Ideally, you should try viewing the website using a range of different web browsers and on a number of different PCs. Also think about testing the site using both dial-up and broadband connections as download times can vary considerably.
Ensure that all the pages that make up the site can be opened, that links work properly and that the content is displayed correctly. Only think about taking your site live once you’re happy that any glitches have been ironed out.
There’s no place like homepage
Creating your own website can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be, and there’s no doubt that putting a website together and keeping it up to date is a hobby all in itself. Remember that you can start by creating a very basic website and then keep adding more to it at a later date as your confidence increases.
Hopefully, though, you’ll now have a clearer idea of what is involved in creating your own website and will be in a better position to get started.
Free trial
If you like the idea of creating your own website but would like a taster of website creation before you think about creating a permanent website, you can.
Design and edit a site and publish it online free for 30 days courtesy of ZyWeb. Just go to the ZyWeb homepage and click on the Try Now link at the top-right of the page, then click on the Join Now option that appears. You’ll need to enter the details requested in the text boxes provided.
After that, it’s simply a case of following the instructions that appear on the screen. There’s even a selection of template designs for your site. There’s a basic text editing tool that allows you to change the look and content of the text you include and it’s also possible to upload images to your site.
When you are satisfied with the website you have put together, click on the Finish button, then click on the Save and Publish buttons for a link to your site. You can send this link to anyone you want to view your site.
Don’t forget that the trial runs out after 30 days and the site will be lost unless you upgrade to a paid-for account.
By Rob Hawkins
Source: vnunet.com
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