Create your own
website
building
a website is not as complex as it looks. You can build a site is as
little as 30 minutes depending on the way you want your site to look.
This guide is a great place to start building web pages. This guide
will help beginners and experienced users. I am going to include the
basics and then outline point for the more experienced users. You are
probably asking yourself where do you start or how to get started? I
have pondered that question each time when building a website or page.
I have always tried to picture in my mind what I am trying to say or
what point to get across to anyone that is looking at the website. I
also do a lot of comparative analysis looking at other sites who are
trying to get there point across. I hope that this guide will help to
get over those tough times when inspiration has taken a break.
First Step get a
name and register a domain.
The first
to do is get a domain name. A domain name is a name that you give your
website or page that you register with a domain name registrar who will
record the domain name and associate it with you and where to find it
on the world wide web. example: www.yoursite.com.
Everyone has to registar there domain name, you pay a fee for 1 or more
years to own that domain name. This would be the same as creating a
business name and registering with the community. For more information
regarding domain names we have created a 'Guide for choosing
a domain name' .
Choose
a Web Host and sign up for an accountA web
hosting company offers services to host your site for a fee. There are
thousands of web hosting companies and each one has a diverse menu of
features and options to help website owners run the day to day
services. Web hosts manage hundreds or thousands of websites. They
offer a direct connection to the network that is designed to handle a
lot of traffic. The better the speed and number of connections the
higher the cost. Web hosts offer quite a bit of variety and the choices
are confusing to figure out initially. So again to get futher in to
detail you can read this guide how
to pick a web hosting company. After you had a chance to
look at the different offers then you can choose one of our plans, or
choose from these other low
cost web hosting companies.
Web Page
construction and design
Here comes the FUN part of creating your
website. You need to build the website itself if you use templates or
shoot from the hip you need to consider the layout and the function of
the website. I encourage everyone to create their very own website
first since this will give you a better idea what takes place when you
build the site and have to make sure that all features are functional.
By doing this you can figure out how to stream line or fix issues on
the fly.
If you have a third party company that will
be building your website then you don't need to worry about the detail
of the website. I would still recommend reading some of the links that
I have included in this section for better understanding of what
happens in the development of a website. again I am assuming that
anyone reading this guide is a beginner and will try to keep as much
geek speak out of the description. There are many different types of
coding and layout and trying to list them all is going to be limited,
so I will try to group them if I miss any specific types of coding or
design I apologize I will try to get a list of styles and programming
included at the end of the guide.
The priority is getting your information up
and as fast as possible. Keep in mind that if this is your first
website or page then don't worry about sweating every little detail
because you will be building the site over again and will be able to
update and fix any issues. at that time. The idea is to build a website
and then get comfortable doing site adjustments. Site adjustments will
help you stay on top of the work and will make your website com
upgradeable for the next time you build a website.
When you
build your site you will need to get a editor that is capable of
editing the website, Most editors will give you basic editing
capabilities with PlugIns or some advanced options to edit in languages
such as css, php, xhtml, asp, and a host of others. We have used quite
a few and I am using a text editor with Open Office and KompoZer.
Open office is a Open source version of Office suite that have quite a
few tools and applications built in to it. KompoZer is a variation of
NVU's wysiwyg feature editor. I have used it with other applications
that are specific to the code that I am trying to doctor up. You can
spend quite a bit of money on commercial versions of wysiwyg editors.
but they are usually locked in one format and the add ons are an
additional cost and are not able to convert to a standardized language
once you create the object. Try the free editors first and then venture
on to the commercial versions. Here are some freeware
editors . FYI NVU basic has a step by step to help create
and then PUBLISH your web page.
Designer Quilting Fabrics
Once you
get your website designed and lay out done you want to spend some time
with making all the links and bookmarks are working and associated with
the correct web link on the other page or same page. When you post the
site to the hosting site you might have to rebuild some of the links
since calling out to documents locally behave different than how they
behave in an hosted environment.
Posting your site
using publisher or FTP software.
This is where all of your work so far is
going to be uploaded to the web hosting software. The traditional
methods are posting/publishing from the wysiwyg editor and ftp
software. KompoZer is used as an example of software that has a
publishing utility built in to the KompoZer application. You will need
to have information for publishing your website to the hosted directory
the URL to the website, the administration userid and password and a
directory to publish to. The last is where most problems occur either
the directory is not able to be created or the directory doesn't exist.
for more complete information please check your help or how to for
the publishing software that you are using. I have also created a guide
for the basic help and questions that are very generic but helpful. How to post
your website guide. Ftp Is another way of posting or
uploading your new website. FTP is a great way to get comfortable with
your new hosting site. With FTP you need to know how to negotiate with
the file directory structure and create folders with the correct
access. You can do this with command line commands or get yourself a
FTP client. There are many FTP clients and they all have a connection
manager built into them that gives you a graphic example of the file
directory. With the correct access you can click and drag in most of
the applications. Here is a list of FTP clients that
can help with uploading and publishing your new website.
Is your site
available yet?
Make sure that you do not limit your
visibility to just the browser and html editor that you used to design
your website. Accessibility and Functionality should be the main
concern now. Do you see your website? Do you see the same tools when
viewing thru a different browser. How bout a different Operating
System? I wanted to mention this earlier, but you should be familiar
with a couple of validation tools to help make you website compliant
with industry standards. the most familiar is of course W3C standards.
you also have code compliant for each type of Plugin or add on that you
have added to your website HTML, forms, xhtml, css, php, JavaScript,
java, asp, and flash, and lots of others. check here if you need help
in finding a HTML
validation tool. Most validation with also help with the
functionality of the site also.
Who is seeing your
websites?
How to get more exposure and have other
sites create pointers to your website. Making your website available
for the masses has become a science and for some a form of Art. There
are LOTS of programs and services that make some offers that will help
to put your site on the map. Be very careful about getting attention
for your site. These services and applications are expensive and need
to be viewed very carefully. before you make any commitments. Search
Engine Optimization is a very important and there is lots of money that
is spent each year to get a better ranking which in turns gives your
site a high probability in get more money for advertising by bringing
more viewers to your site..
Wrapping it up and
putting a bowtie on it...
This document is by no means the end all
document for web building. The ideas and the information that is
included here has been marketed and re-marketed some of the information
has been updated and or replaced. The steps are basic and there is a
more information guide with each section that will add to the overall
document. With all that said the BASIC OVERVIEW is what's important.
remember to check out the other guides and the suggested reading list.
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