How-To: Creating Your Very own Website

Almost everyone now who has a computer with internet access has a website of their own. That website could be a personal one just about them, or they could have a small business. Maybe kids have a MySpace or FaceBook page, or maybe they made one completely from scratch. By reading this handy guide, I will walk you through step by step making your very own website, with your very own name in the URL. The process is fairly simple, and you don’t any programming experience at all or you don’t need to pay for anything. You just need to know how to work a computer, how to use the internet, and need an internet connection (which I am pretty sure you have, considering you are reading this article on the internet).

Types of websites

There are many different types of websites, of which have many different types of programming used to make them (don’t worry about all of the programming terms I use, as we will get to that later in the guide). Some websites include a personal website, which is just a site about you. You probably wouldn’t have any more than 10 pages in a personal website and you would use CSS or HTML to make it, and use JavaScript to spruce it up and add effects. Another type would be a website for your small business. This website would probably have no more than 30 to 40 pages or so, and would probably use CSS. Finally, the third website you would want to make is a large business one, consisting of 100 pages or more. These are industrial companies, such as Microsoft, who have literally thousands upon thousands of pages on their website. We don’t really need to worry about making one like that, because I am going to show you how to make a personal website later on in the guide.

Programming used to make websites

There are so many different programming languages out now used to make websites, but I am going to cover just the most basic and most popular languages. The most popular is probably HTML, because every site has some HTML code in it. HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language. HTML uses tags to organize and format text, pictures, audio, and multimedia into a website.Another Type of language is called Cascading Style Sheets, or CSS. CSS works by making a default layout and format for a webpage, and each page would have the same layout and format, except with different content on it. CSS is more complicated to script than HTML, but once you get that script in, that takes care of all of the formatting so all you have to is type regular text into the text editor.

JavaScript is a scripting language that can actually be embedded into HTML code. You would use JavaScript maybe to add a clock or visitor counter to your website. JavaScript is very complicated and hard to learn, but I will talk about it later.

Time to make your website!

Now that I have explained to the basics of a website and how one works, we can now start working on your very own! First of all, we need web hosting. This is server space to store all of the files on that will be viewed on the internet. I am going to use FreeWebs in this example, but there are many others, some of which include 110mb, Yahoo Geocities, GoDaddy, and 1&1. I am using FreeWebs because it is simple to use and is very popular.

First of, start by going to http://www.freewebs.comOnce at the FreeWebs site, click the button “Start Now”

Now, a window should pop up. Enter all of the info into the fields shown. Your username will be in the web URL, in this case I used: “whats-up-wakefield-example-site.” It will say if it available or not. Enter a password, and make sure it a strong one, and that you can remember it easily. Now enter your email address. Select your gender and your age, and I chose “my age is private”. Read the terms and conditions, check the box, and click Go!

Now, if all the information you entered is correct, you should now pick a template to use. I am going to use “Clean as a Whistle” For my example site. Click the one you want, and then a confirmation box will come up. Click Ok to proceed if you really want to use the template you selected.

Next, Describe your site. The site title will be what you see at the top of your internet

browser. Select Done! to continue

An advertisement will come up. Select the “No thanks, let me build my website” button up at the top to continue

After you continue, this page should pop up. Click the second option, Start my website from a blank canvas, and click continue.

Now, You can edit your site however you want! Use the toolbox on the side to add multimedia and widgets to your website. All of the formatting options are in the toolbox. You can add new pages and preview your site any time you want. I was talking about JavaScript earlier, and there are multiple sites you can get free JavaScript codes from that will make your website more creative. You could add a clock script or even a visitor counter script. The widgets you can add are also very neat too. They allow you to add shout boxes, and all the things like that to your website. Do whatever you like, because now it is YOUR website!Thank you for reading my guide and I hope this helped you out a lot in creating your very own website! Here is the link to the example site I used: http://www.freewebs.com/whats-up-wakefield-example-site