How to build your own web site From The Ground Up
By Marc Gerard
You have a dream—of a web site, a colorful, animated slice of the Internet for your very own, with pictures of your junior year abroad, a message board, and links to your favorite bands. You want to put yourself out there-you want to be seen.
But there's a problem. You don't know HTML, never mind anything about stylesheets or any other sheets. And JavaScript? What is that, some crazy font or something?
The good news is that you don't actually have to have a lot of tech know-how to build a basic home page. In fact, you don't need much at all. A little curiosity and some basic computer skills will do just fine.
Store it
The first thing to work out when you decide to build your home page is where you're going to store it. In other words, you have to hunt down a server.Most college
checking out downloads.com. Search the site for web editors, and you'll get a list of both shareware and demo programs that you can sample for yourself. Among the more popular editors are Microsoft's Front Page (microsoft.com/frontpage) and Adobe's Page Mill (adobe.com/products/pagemill/main.html).
PageMill is a great editor for beginners and though Adobe has recently stopped selling it (their current editor is called GoLive), it's still available at downloads.com.
Once you've nailed down a server and picked an editor, you're ready to build your site. I recommend starting simple: animation, rollovers—when your text or picture changes as the mouse cursor moves over it-movies, and sounds all require a little more advanced work.
You can create a text-based web site by typing the text into the editor as you would when using a web processor.
Shareware's a good way to go for beginners; these images, icons and backgrounds are easy to import and instantly rewarding.
For your next, more advanced project there's a gazillion sites out there to help you with design issues, enhancements, and more complicated procedures.
Like anything else, web design takes some practice, especially since the web advances so quickly. But soon you'll have it all figured out, and that site you imagined will be yours—complete with a flashy intro page, home movies, animated pictures, and rollover text. And I can't wait to see it. *
More Links
build-website.com
build-your-own-web-site.com
zdnet.com/zdhelp
For all things related to web site creation, head straight to webmonkey.com-one of the most informative web-design sites out there.
students can store their pages on their university's server for free, so check that option out before paying an Internet company.
The Internet is based on a language called Hypertext Markup Language, or HTML, and if you're planning on getting very innovative with your site, it's worth your while to learn it. For this and all other things related to web site creation, head straight to webmonkey.com-one of the most informative web-design sites out there.
Edit it
If you'd rather stick with the basics and avoid writing your own code, then the next step is to find a program to write the code for you.
This program is called a web editor, and there are several versions available. Most of them are relatively simple to use—not too much more difficult than a word processor or a basic drawing program. Some editors are available as shareware, but others can be quite expensive.To get a feel for the different editors at your disposal, I'd recommend
If you want a specific background or you'd like to put pictures on your site, you need to either scan these into your computer or find them online and download them. There are a number of sites on the web that offer shareware and freeware icons, backgrounds, and images that you can use on your site, including Cnet.com (download.cnet.com) and About.com (shareware.about.com).
Extras
Top 10 Selling Albums of All Time
1. The Eagles: Greatest Hits 26,000,000
2. Michael Jackson: Thriller 25,000,000
3. Pink Floyd: The Wall 23,200,000
4. Led Zeppelin: IV 22,000,000
5. Billy Joel: Greatest Hits I & II 20,200,000
6. Fleetwood Mac: Rumours 18,000,000
7. Shania Twain: Come On Over 17,250,000
8. Beatles: "White Album"
17,200,000
9. Whitney Houston: The Bodyguard 16,740,000
10. Boston: Boston 16,000,000
Source: Recording Industry Association of America
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