how to make your own website

A domain name is critically important for a web site as it brands your presence on the web. Without a domain name, no one will know how to get to your site. Google.com, Yahoo.com and Msn.com are all examples of domain names. Someone types it in and they get to the web site they are looking for. If you are making a web site of your own, and you want people other than you to see it on your machine, you need the domain name to point them to your site.

P.S. - If you have a domain name in mind, and want to use it to brand your web site you are making, don't wait for someone else to take it - Register your domain Immediately! If you don't you can start branding your site to later find out the domain name you want is taken.

You need somewhere to host your files. They have to sit somewhere for people to see them, and having it sit on your computer just won't work. You need a web hosting provider to give you space to host the files. They will set it up for you, and you set the domain name to point to their servers and your site is live for the whole world to see.

Who can you use for web hosting? Lots of companies exist, but I use Domains at Retail for my web hosting needs. There lowest price plan starts at $4.95 / month. Take one less trip to McDonalds a month and you have your hosting paid for. It's really cheap, but an effective service.

So many companies offer web design, its crazy to pick one. Even people fresh out of school claim to be professionl web site designers. You can pay someone to make a web site, or choose to answer the question "how to make a web site of your own" yourself.

A few free web editors exist that allow you to create a page through a WYSIWYG editor view. The one offered free is:

NVU (http://www.nvu.com/).

This will get your started on editing the site and getting it ready. You will then need to FTP your files to your web hosting server and your site is Live. For more info on FTP, visit Wikipedia's page at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Transfer_Protocol

Alternatively, many web hosts provide you the ability to buy an online Web Editor program that lets you pick a template and make the changes through an interface. You hit publish and your web site is instantly changed. Wow! Now that's awesome! They do charge you for this, but the hosting is included. Quite the nice bonus.

Where can I get one of these Builders? Visit our Squidoo Lens on Web Site Tonight. WebSite Tonight allows you to pick from many professional templates and just start entering text to get a web site up and running.

Again, I use Domains at Retail when purchasing my copy of Web Site Tonight. For about $1 more than their regular hosting costs, you get a built in WYSIWYG editor! Some pretty amazing stuff if you ask me.

Sometimes, when creating a web site the one skill lacking is the ability to open a Image Editing Program like photoshop to design your website.

Thankfully, for those beginning a web site and looking for a nicely coded site they can start from and build upon, the Web World has created Web Site Templates.

Web Site templates provide a great foundation for a web site design, and allow you to save lots of man hours coding from scratch. You can then change images or simply change text and have a web site running.

In most cases, you will want to change the template to look less like a template and like your own work, but in a pinch it will work.

Where to get Web Site Templates?

1) Open Web Design (http://www.openwebdesign.org)

2) OSWD (http://www.oswd.org)

Make your choices, and start getting your web site ready for prime time viewing in front of your friends. Get that catchy domain name, choose a host to provide you Web Hosting, and then Design your site.