Create your own webpage

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I've had a number of requests from people asking for instructions on how they can create their own website. I'm no computer expert - I'm just interested in computers - so the way I have created this site is very simple and needs no HTML programming skills at all. Once you have created your basic site, you can always read up on how to do the fancy stuff, though the instructions below will let you create a site just like ours.

If you are serious about creating your own website then you need just four things - an Internet Service Provider (ISP) that allows you your own webspace, software that actually creates the site, software that allows you to upload your newly created webpages to your ISP server and, finally, a method of promoting your site.

I'll talk about each one in turn.

Internet Service Provider

Find out from your ISP whether you have a certain amount of webspace reserved on their server. If not, or if you can't find out, then you may want to change your ISP. There are now many firms offering free webspace. Two of the largest are:

Freeserve.co.uk who currently give you 30Mb of space, are free to join - you only pay the cost of a local rate phone call - but you pay about 50p per minute if you phone their Technical Helpdesk
Freenetname.co.uk who I am with, give you 30Mb of webspace, are also free to join - you only pay for the local rate phone call or subscribe to their monthly anytime usage package. Technical support now costs 50p per minute for 'pay as you go' access users but at local rate for anytime and broadband users. The main advantage with this ISP is that, once registered, you can choose your own Domain name for free i.e. HansonFamily.co.uk, as long as someone else doesn't already have it. This would normally cost you anything from Ł5 upwards but is totally free with Freenetname. The only downside is that if you want to move from them at a later date, they will charge a transfer fee to transfer your domain name out to another provider.

The other advantage with both ISPs is that you don't have to be Online to create e-mails, which will save you money.

All good ISPs now offer Broadband connection. However, if Broadband hasn't got to you yet or you don't want to pay extra money for it, then try Onspeed. It's a small program that gives Broadband speeds on a 56K modem and it really works! How do I know - because I use it. It was originally developed for the US military and subsequently transformed into this consumer product by a British technology company. If your interested in getting this program or finding out more about it then click on the banner below. I promise it does work and for a fraction of the cost of Broadband.

Software Required To Build Your Site

On first looking into building my own site, I thought I would have to learn up on HTML, the language that most webpages are written in. But no. I read in a book about a free webpage building tool that lets you build your site in WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get). It is just like building your webpages on a word processor. No HTML is needed at all, although if you want to see the code behind the upfront gloss, then there's a button on the tool bar to press which shows you the code.

The product I am referring to is called 'AOLpress' and although it was presumably built for AOL users, it can be downloaded by anyone. The other beauty of this product is that it is free. The program is fully downloadable from AOLpress.com and although the program comes with a Tutorial, you can download from the same site a full documentation manual. I learnt most of what I needed from the excellent Tutorial.

One very important piece of equipment you will want on your initial webpage is a Counter. Some ISPs will give you the HTML code to put into your own webpage - freenetname is one of them. Otherwise you can get Counters from sites that offer free ones as long as you don't have more than 50 hits a day - I wish! If you do, you will pay a fee depending on how many hits you get a day. I would expect a Personal Homepage to fall into the former category and be free.

If you want to add some fancy moving images, then one product I found which has about 1,000 royalty-free images, comes from Expert Software and is called Animated Clip Art. It cost me £9.99 from ToysR Us. Expert Software have other titles that may interest you.

Uploading Your Website To The Internet Satalite

So far, like me, you could have your own Domain name and have produced your own webpages on your PC, all for free. However, you now have to upload all this information to your webspace on the Internet. The best uploading tool I could find did cost me money but only after I had tried it for a month, as the program was Shareware. The tool is called 'Terrapin FTP Browser' and once you have used the product for a month, it will stop working unless you register it for £19.95. This isn't bad considering that is all you are likely to have to fork out for your own website. Terrapin can be downloaded from tpin.com. Again, there is a Help screen to get you going but I found that if you are using an ISP where their name is in your domain name i.e. blogg.freeserve.co.uk, you need to contact them and find out where the uploading area is on their server. If you have got your own Domain name without the ISP name in it, then when you come to create your New Connection, which is the first thing you have to do, then this is all done automatically.

Promoting Your Webpage

The is the one area which I haven't felt entirely comfortable with.

Once you've uploaded your site, you will want to tell others where to find it. Most search engines have buttons at the bottom of their pages saying 'Add your site' or 'Add your URL'. If you click on these you can individually add your site to their search engine. However, you are never too sure if this has been actioned, the only thing you will see, if you have one, is your site counter slowly climbing as people drop in on your site.

There are some sites that promote that they will add your site to over 400 search engines but I have been warned that some of these just take your details so that they can send you junk mail. So be careful!

However, three very good submission sites I found, which were free, can be reached by clicking on the links below.

If anyone has any other good ways of getting sites promoted for free, then please mail me by clicking on the symbol

And finally..... Get some stats of the people that visit your site. You can do this by downloading a counter direct from Microsoft at . You can also make a banner which will be displayed on other people's websites. All you have to do in return is to place a banner like the one below on your site and it will scroll through different sites everytime the page is refreshed. Your banner could be one of them!!! To create your own banner, just click on the LinkExchange link at the bottom right of the banner.

You may also find it useful to link your sites to others. The easiest way to do this is by clicking on the banner below.

So there you have it. I have tried to keep these instructions simple but if you come across any problems, either because you can't find the products mentioned above, or the instructions aren't clear, then just contact me by clicking on the symbol and I'll be happy to help.

If you would like me to build a site for you, register your own domain name and have it hosted by one of the largest hosting companies on the Web, then click on the banner below to find out more.

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