Step One: Web Space
The first thing you need to think about is where your web pages will be physically stored. If you have internet access, you have an ISP (internet service provider, such as Earthlink, Netscape, MSN, AOL, etc. The easiest way to get started is to check with your ISP.
Most ISP's include some web space with your account. You might want to check to see if you already have some. The way that works is that they basically store your pages on their computer, which is always connected to the internet. Your ISP will tell you where your space is, how much you have, and how to connect to it. They also provide you with a URL (an address; for example, the address Earthlink gave me was http://home.earthlink.net/~lareaa.) Your URL allows other people to connect to those pages and see them on their computer. If your ISP doesn't give you any web space, you should search for "web hosting" on the internet in any search engine. At Earthlink, my account provides me with several mailboxes (email addresses) and each mailbox comes with 10 Mb of web space. You can set up your main website page in one and still use the other space by building websites there and linking them together.
Step Two: Your Web Pages
Once you have some web space, you have to have some web pages to put there. The easiest way to do this is probably with the web building tools provided by your ISP. Usually you look at some sample web pages, choose a design, and the program will let you put pictures and words in certain places on those pages. The program will also automatically put the information on your web site for you. I am not crazy about these preformatted pages because usually you are very limited in what you can do. However, if you don't want to learn HTML or invest in expensive site-building software, this is likely the way to go.
Other alternatives for creating web pages without learning HTML include purchasing software that creates web pages or creating pages in Word and converting them to HTML. The software is fairly expensive. I think Dreamweaver is the best. Microsoft's software is FrontPage, but the pages may not always work in both Explorer and Netscape. You can do your web pages in Word but the files it creates take up a lot more space and I think you will find this doesn't work well. I would suggest learning some basic HTML. It really isn't very hard. However, you might start with Word just because you probably already have it and know how to use it. If you get serious you will want to learn to do something else later. If you use Word you will just create a document, but save it in html format. You will make links by using "Insert Hyperlink" from the menu.
Note on naming your pages: the main page of your web site will be named index.html or index.htm. When someone types in the name of your site, if they don't specify a particular page, the browser will open the index page. You can be flexible in naming your other pages. So if your website is www.marysmith.com, your home page would be www.marysmith.com/index. Other pages might be www.marysmith.com/photos and www.marysmith.com/myfavoritejokes. You will need to make links to these other pages on your home page.
Step Three: Uploading your files (Publishing)
This step is where you copy the web pages you have made into the space that your ISP assigned to you. When you get all your pages ready to go, you will use either your internet service provider's tool to upload them or an ftp program. FTP stands for file transfer protocol. The most common FTP program for Windows users is WS_FTP. I have an older version of this from when it was free. Apparently it is now shareware. Here is a link: http://www.ipswitch.com/downloads/index.html#ftp . Another shareware FTP program that is very popular is CuteFTP: http://www.globalscape.com/products/ftp_clients.asp If you are going to buy a web page design program it will likely include FTP capability. was talking about. If you want to find a free one, go to www.zdnet.com, click on downloads and search on FTP.
In the ftp program, you will have to put in some information about your ISP when you run it the first time. This is similar to setting up email, there will just be a few things like your ISP's ftp address, your user name and password, that you have to enter to get going. After that, it basically shows you a box with your files (on your computer) on the right and the files in your web space on the left. You select the file you want to move to your web space and click on a left arrow button to move it over there. Transferring the files is much easier than making the pages. Changing your web page: Once you get it set up, you just make a new page, and then delete the old one, and move the new one to your web space.
Hopefully the above will give you a general idea of how setting up a web page works. Let me know if any of this doesn't make sense or if I missed something..
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