websites

[devilbliss]

How dificult is it to make a website.. Thanks

[vehelpfulguy]

This is like asking how difficult is knitting.

Millions of people do knitting so it cannot be that difficult, but if I tried to do it I would get into a terrible mess.

Creating a web site on YOUR computer is dead easy. For example you can go into Word, write some text, save it as HTML, and lo, you have your web site.

But then you have to get it out to the world. That is more difficult as you have to send it to a server owned by an ISP, and then it gets more complex.

Best start is to buy a book like Building a Web Site for Dummies as this takes you through the basics.

Here is a link to the book at Amazon

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Building-Site-Dummies- David-Crowder/dp/0764571443/sr=8-6/qid=1161182 882/ref=sr_1_6/202-2519558-3949469?ie=UTF8&s=b ooks

[vehelpfulguy]

The steps are as follows:

1) Create yourself a domain (www.yourname.com for example). This is very easy and very cheap, few pounds a year.

I did it with Netcetera but many companies can help you do this.

http://netcetera.co.uk/

2) Next find someone to HOST your site. Again I used Netcetera but many companies offer this. It costs me 30 pounds a year for a simple site.

http://netcetera.co.uk/

3) Install a product on your PC or Mac to create the web site.

There are many products like Macromedia Dreamweaver, Microsoft Front Page, Serif WebPlus (only 60 pounds) plus some free products.

4) Create the site, either using the GUI interface supplied with the program or the HTML language (or a combination of both)

5) When ready use FTP to send it from your PC to the company who will host your site.

6) Continue to update the site on your PC and send a new version to the company hosting it every so often.

Easy.

[sissimarissa]

I hope devilbliss will not mind me asking a question, but what is FTP, please, vehelpfulguy, and what do we actually do to send it to the host company?

[vehelpfulguy]

FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol.

It is a method of moving files from one computer to another.

When you download things from the internet to your PC via your browser you are probably using FTP.

There are a number of programs to help you FTP your web site from your PC to the ISPs server.

WS_FTP is one http://www.ipswitch.com/products/ws_ftp/index. asp

Cute FTP is another
http://www.cuteftp.com/products/ftp_clients.as p

Some products have this built in. For example FrontPage has a "publish" option which sends it to your ISPs server.

[vehelpfulguy]

You send it to the server as follows.

The ISP will give you an "address" where you send it, plus a userid and password for your site (so only you can access it).

You create all your web site inside a single folder on your PC. You normally have a main file (often called INDEX.HTML) and all the other files (images etc).

You use one of the tools I mentioned above, logon to your remote site, then COPY the files from your PC to the remote ISP server.

This is fairly easy to do and may take a few minutes.

Once that has been done your site is published.

[OBonio]

It also depends what you want to do with it. If you want to replicate an eBay type site, then difficult (well, not that difficult, BUT with that many users other things come into play like scalability).

If you just want to put some info up on the web about something, then that's pretty easy.

[sissimarissa]

Many thanks, vehelpfulguy, I have printed this off to use as a guide. Sorry I didn't reply earlier but I could not find the thread again in this new Answerban!!

[wideboy]

To get you started (after the paid suggestions above) try the free nVu at


www.nvu.com