I told you a few days ago how you can register a domain name for a really cheap price (see http://www.upaas.com/blog/index.php/2006/05/28/free-emailand-a-dirt-cheap-domain-name/). Now that you have your name, and probably a “keeper page”, you want to build your website. We’ll talk about getting some cheap (or free!) hosting, later.
Of course, you could just install WordPress on your site, once you have a good, reliable, cheap host set up, and make your website strictly a blog. The host I’ll suggest later, also includes email service and a forum message board in your site, along with other fun tools, so you’d have a fully functional site, without building any other html pages. There are hundreds of cool themes for WordPress here, and more on the WordPress site, so your site can be somewhat unique.
But, building your own site from scratch makes it truly unique, and using some good, free software can make it fun, as well. Now there are plenty of free ways to build your site using plain html (the Notepad software you probably already have on your computer is one of them) but learning to write html can be a bit of a chore, and we’re trying to make this easy and fun. You probably will want to use something like Notepad once your pages are built, just to add little things like a title, keywords, and other meta tags, or to check out how some of the code looks, or tweak a few things. Still to build your pages easily, nothing beats a good WYSIWYG software package. WYSIWYG stands for “What You See Is What You Get”, and this kind of software lets you drag and drop images onto your pages, insert text boxes and reply forms, put in text links and menu items, all without writing any code. You also get to see what your page looks like, while you’re building it. I tried several of these free website builders, both online versions and downloads, and they all had major problems, except one.
My suggestion is called Web Weaver EZ. You can download a free 30 day trial of it here. The best part about this trial offer is that after 30 days you can still continue to use Web Weaver EZ to change and update your pages, just some of the more advanced features are unavailable. You can also buy it after 30 days, if you’d like, and its dirt cheap at only $14.95. It has a tutorial, quick tips, and an easy to use menu system. You can learn to use it really well after just a few hours (at most). And it builds fairly “clean html”, well written pages.
You can build all of your pages from scratch, or use a free “template” (a pre-designed layout that you modify) to get started, if looking at the empty page intimidates you a little. A good source for a lot of free, cool templates is My Free Web Templates. You can find hundreds of free templates on their site here. Try to stick to the html section of the free templates when you’re picking one out. Some of the high tech and flash ones look good, but you usually need more software programs (not free) to change them properly, and its not easy or fun.
A few tips to remember when using Web Weaver EZ;
- Try to put the bulk of your text in one central area, unless you use a template and it has several areas for text. If you break it up into a lot of different boxes, it can look jumbled on some browsers
- Create a new file in your Documents (called “website” or something) and save all of your pages in that one folder
- Choose the option to save your images with your pages, when Web Weaver asks you if you want to
- Make one page first, without any big text fields or special items (like forms, or other javascript) and call it “template” when you save it. You can use it to build your other pages. Just make sure to pick “Save As” when you first modify it, and call it something different for each page
- Name your first real page (the “home page” that you want to show up first when people visit your website) index
- Click on every element (area or picture) on your page, and use the “Position” then “Lock Element” menu choices to freeze the elemet in place, once its exactly where you want it. Some elements in templates will already be frozen in place, and clicking on it and using Lock Element will unlock them. You can tell which ones are frozen because the frame around the element when you click on it will be a solid line. Play around with locking and unlocking one, and you’ll see what I mean.
Those are the important points. Use the tutorials, play around with it, and have fun. Make your pages whatever you want them to be, not necessarily what the template says they should be. Hobbies, Pictures, etc. are generic but OK. But you could make the titles something like Golf, Tennis, Sailing, or Wedding, Key West Trip, etc. Don’t worry about everything being perfect. Your site will hopefully be changing and evolving as you go, and remember, its supposed to be fun, so enjoy it.
Freebie Jack