Step 2 - How To Design Your Web Site
In the last step we discussed the importance of finding a good web hosting company. This step will focus on creating and designing your own web site.
If you are serious about building web sites and will be building dynamic or more complex sites, then Dreamweaver is certainly a good investment. It is the web site creating software that web professionals use and the industry standard. I have been using it for about 18 months and highly recommend it. However, it is very expensive and is probably only worth the investment if you are serious about creating a lot of web sites. If you are looking to buy it, the cheapest place I found online - was direct from the manufacturer - Macromedia.
Another option is to buy a professional web site template from a company such as Monster Templates and all you have to do then is just add your own text and upload it to your hosting.
Which ever way you decide to create your web site you will need to get an idea of how html works. The best site I found that teaches html in an easy and fun way is W3Schools. They show examples of how code is written and what it looks like when it is shown in a browser. Its a brilliant learning resource and worth 5 minutes of your time.
That concludes todays lesson. Lesson 3 will be with you in a few days, focusing on a very important topic - How to get visitors to your site....
HTML - the language of web sites
HyperText Markup Language (html), is a language in which web pages are written. In the early days of the internet, people created web sites from raw html code in a text editor such as notepad. The only problem with this was it was very time consuming and you could not see what you had created until you put the code on a web server and looked at in a web browser. This problem allowed for the creation of the WYSIWYG (what you see, is what you get) interface. WYSIWYG is used to describe applications that let you see how a finished HTML document will look whilst still letting you edit it. Dreamweaver and FrontPage are the two most popular WYSIWYG HTML editors.If you are serious about building web sites and will be building dynamic or more complex sites, then Dreamweaver is certainly a good investment. It is the web site creating software that web professionals use and the industry standard. I have been using it for about 18 months and highly recommend it. However, it is very expensive and is probably only worth the investment if you are serious about creating a lot of web sites. If you are looking to buy it, the cheapest place I found online - was direct from the manufacturer - Macromedia.
Web Sites Made Easy...
If Dreamweaver looks a bit much for what you are wanting to do then the best way to go is to use a WYSIWYG program that comes complete with your web hosting. These provide a quick and easy way of getting your web site up in minutes. The web hosting companies I recommended last week all come with site building software and they all have demos which you can try, here's a summary of what each one offers:-- 1. Yahoo! has Sitebuilder which offers:-
- Design web pages from scratch with easy-to-use drag-and-drop tools.
- Customize one of their 380+ web site designs.
- Choose from more than 3,400 royalty-free images or add your own.
- Get step-by-step help building web pages from their simple wizard.
- Add spice to your web pages with exciting add-ons like forms, site search, Yahoo! Maps, and more.
- IX Web Hosting has Site Studio which offers:-
- Hundreds of pre-designed templates
- Update your website's content in real-time
- Enhance your website with "feature-rich" content pages, like:
- + Splash Screens
- "About Us" page with company description
- + Flash Splashes
- + Interactive FAQs
- + Driving Directions with online map functionality
- + ICQ Contact Center
- + News and Events
- 1and1 Web Hosting has 1and1 Websitebuilder with the following features:-
- Easy to use, impressive results
- The handy wizard guides you through the site-building process from start to publish, with easy-to-follow instructions and simple point-and-click prompts. Choose your template and customize it with fonts, colors, and graphics, then add your content using the built-in text editor.
- Add extras
- Easily add exciting elements to your site, like feedback forms, a visitor counter, guestbook, forums, a flash-animated start page, and more. Plus, you can add META tag keywords and descriptions within the WebsiteBuilder interface so search engines can find your site.
- Choose your template
- Select your favorite professionally designed template. Then customize it to match your exact needs
Another option is to buy a professional web site template from a company such as Monster Templates and all you have to do then is just add your own text and upload it to your hosting.
Which ever way you decide to create your web site you will need to get an idea of how html works. The best site I found that teaches html in an easy and fun way is W3Schools. They show examples of how code is written and what it looks like when it is shown in a browser. Its a brilliant learning resource and worth 5 minutes of your time.
That concludes todays lesson. Lesson 3 will be with you in a few days, focusing on a very important topic - How to get visitors to your site....