Back to the HTML Tricks Main Menu

How to build your first website - part 1

In order to keep this little tutorial short and sweet we will not go in to many details, but we give you a link to more in-depth tutorials in each section.

 

What we need to start:

• A computer PC o Macintosh.
  Guess no need to elaborate here as you probably already have one with internet access as you read this.

• A web page/site editor.
  If you dont have any webpage editing software installed on your computer you can download a webpage editor from here Some reviews of popular editors are found here. Note there are some basic text style editors and some wysiwyg (What you see is what you get) editors where the later group might be easier to start with. Some popular programs are for example Dreamweaver and MS Frontpage.

• Next you need hosting (where you store your files accessible to the web) and a domain name or a address (URL) that your hosting provider will give you. Some internet access providers give you a free account with your internet access account (best call them up and ask) or you can use one of the free hosting services like Yahoo / GeoCities for example, Geocities will give you both free hosting and your address. If you plan to use the website for a business then I recommend you get a paid hosting service and buy your own domain name, so you have more control over it and it looks more like a serious business.

 

• A software program to manipulate graphics. If you want to place photos or graphics on your page you need to make them suitable in size for your webpages, photos for example can be resized and compressed for faster download so your pages load faster, for this you can use most graphic or photo editing software. If you dont have anything on your computer yet you can download a graphics editor here. Paint Shop Pro is a good and easy to use program or Photoshop for the more advanced user is a great program that comes not cheap do.

• FTP Software.
  An FTP (File Transfer Protocol) Software will help you to upload the files from your computer to the web server of your hosting provider that is connected always to the internet. Its really easy to use, you just set up the data like server name, user name, password etc once and connect and then you get on the left side the directories and files of your local computer and on the right side the directories and files on your hosting companies server, so you just select on the left side what files you want to upload and click they are sent to the server. You can find some FTP programs to download here.

How to build your first website - part 1
How to build your first website - part 2
How to build your first website - part 3
How to build your first website - part 4
Back to the HTML Tricks Home Page