Creating your Website
Well, it depends on what you know. Do you know HTML? If you don't, you probably should start out by learning at least a little. While there are programs that will totally shield you from ever having to see HTML (the language that all web pages are written in), knowing at least the basic principles will be useful. How do you learn it? Well, from a book or from the web. Just type "learning HTML" into a search engine and start reading. It's really not very hard. HTML is a "markup language" (HyperText Markup Language), not a programming language. That means that the text you write is "marked up" with symbols which control the layout. So, dor example if you type the string "<P>" you start a new paragraph and if you put "<B>" before a block of text and "</B>" after it, that text will appear in bold. So basic HTML is quite simple.
As I said, there are also programs that allow you to create and format text and images for web display, much like a word processor is used to create and format text and images for printing. With many of these programs you can generate HTML pages without you ever having to "get your hands dirty" Microsoft FrontPage is one such program. Another is Macromedia Dreamweaver, and a third is Netobjects Fusion. These programs are quite powerful (and sometimes quite expensive), but the more powerful they are, the more complex they are to use and they are not really much easier to learn than HTML - though you can probably do more with them than HTML given an equal amount of time to learn.
I have used Microsoft Frontpage on a project and it is certainly possible to build a fairly complex site without knowing any HTML at all. It generates somewhat "bloated" code, meaning it tends to throw in a lot more HTML tags than are needed, plus if you use all the Frontpage features you have to find a hosting company that supports them, since they need special software installed on the server. If you don't use any special Frontpage features, the code will run on any server - but that sort of defeats one of the reasons using Frontpage!
There are also programs which will help you with HTML but don't write it all for you, and these are usually referred to as HTML editors. This site is mostly written using native HTML, but with help from a program called 1st Page 2000. It has a few "wizards" to help you out if you get stuck, plus spell checkers and HTML checkers. There's now a newer version, 1st page 2006, available via the same link. Both programs are free to use, but request you register them for a small fee.
Many webhosts have sitebuilder software available as part of a hosting package. For example HOSTMONSTER
provides access to the Page Wizard sitebuilder. This is a program which makes page layout very easy. You can type a block of text, then control the size, font, color and position by simply dragging it around the screen and making appropriate choices from a menu. You can add images, links etc. and there are a number of site templates you can use to get started. The pages are automatically uploaded to your web space, so you don't have to mess with file transfers via ftp or other techniques.
You can also purchase (or sometimes find free) website templates which you can use as the basis for your website. You'll still have to do some HTML coding, but much of the design aspect of the site will have been done for you. DreamTemplates.com (see banner below) is one site which has some free templates and a subscription service which allows access to thousands more.
