If you’re going to create a new website, the first thing you’ll
want is a name. This probably means a domain name. A domain name
is one of those names ending with ".com", ".net", ".tv" or any
one of those other suffixes. A name like this would give you
something like www.yourdomain.name (".name" is one of the
available options!) You can register a name at any of dozens of
Domain Name Registrars. You can find a list of registrars at
www.internic.net and there’s also a nice non-technical
explanation of the name system there too. Read, learn and enjoy!
I said before "probably" to a domain name because it would be
possible to hang off someone else’s name as in
www.theirdomain.name/yourwebsite This works, but it’s not very
elegant and it really doesn’t save you much, as you’ll see in a
moment.
If your web site is going to be seen by anyone other than you —
and why else would you put so much effort into it?! — you’ll
need space on a web server to host it. What kind of space — and
what kind of server — is going to depend largely on what kind
of site you want to build. For a personal site, you could use
one of the free web hosting services (for example
www.angelfire.com or www.geocities.com ) , but you’ll be
inundated with advertising every time you (or someone else)
visit your site. The advertising pays for it. You could pay
them, or any other web hosting service (see
http://webhosts.thelist.com/ There is a very low cost
alternative. You remember those Registrars you looked at? Many
of them offer site hosting at a very low price. I have used
www.DirectNic.com for quite a long time and they offer
registration for $15.00 and hosting for a year for another
$15.00. They do the DNS, explain all that to you so you can
understand it and enable you to set it all up with a couple of
clicks. There are similar offers from several of those
registrars so you don’t have to take my word for it — check ’em
out and find yourself a good deal!
OK, you now have space with a name and you want to put something
into it. There are several options open to you for this step
also. First, if you used
www.DirectNic.com or one of the other registrar’s with a
similar feature you could used their site creator which, for a
few bucks, will help you, step by step, build your initial site.
You could lay out some bucks for a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What
You Get) generator like Dreamweaver or Frontpage (see
https://www.htmlgoodies.com/articles/frontpagep1.html) The
only problem with these programs for this type of situation is
that unless you already understand the basics of web page
design, the method to use to get started is not entirely
intuitive. That having been said, these programs do have some
good wizards to help you generate some pages, and they have
excellent help systems. There just doesn’t seem to be a good
substitute for some hand-holding and step by step instructions.
Here’s what I recommend at this point: use HTML Goodies! This
was the first purpose of this site. In here you will find * FOR
FREE * step by step Primers and Tutorials for each aspect of
your new site. These Primers and Tutorials were written with you
in mind. They have been organized such that you can use only
those you need for you particular choices of design strategy, or
you could browse through them for ideas for things to include in
your site. I recommend that you start with the HTML Primer
Series (see the links at the left) and then create your first
page.
In the last of the HTML series (You Graduated!) there is some
discussion about getting email, telnet and newsgroup access with
your hosting account. Note that this would only apply to a
standard UNIX (a server operating system) hosting service, and
that these days most hosting service providers don’t bundle all
these things together anymore. The essential things you need are
the space and either FrontPage or FTP upload access. FTP (File
Transfer Protocol — see
https://www.htmlgoodies.com/beyond/ftp.html) is the most
common; FrontPage (and programs that utilize the "FrontPage
Extensions") has another method of uploading built in. There is
more about FrontPage here:
https://www.htmlgoodies.com/articles/frontpagep1.html
Once you have started your site, these basics will all fall into
place for you. At that point you will want to skip around the
various other Primers and Tutorials (see the links in the left
margin) to find all kinds of other things you can add into it.
For a great reference resource, take a look at The Master List
(towards the bottom of the left margin), and if you get stuck,
take advantage of our Mentors (see the bottom of the left
margin); they do an amazing job of responding to questions with
great solutions and are always willing to help you out.
You are now on your way to mastery of the art of publishing on
the World Wide Web! Congratulations!!
Proceed to
The Non-Technical Intro
Part 3
Go to
The Non-Technical Intro
Index
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