In Part 1, we discussed how to purchase a domain name and offered suggestions for choosing a company to host your site. Now, let's continue with how to design your site.
In order to design your own Web site, you need to learn how to create and work with HTML documents. The Net is full of excellent free HTML tutorials that will teach you virtually everything you'll want to know about HTML. The HTML Primer offers eight lessons and a test lab at the end of each lesson for practicing. http://htmlprimer.com
Webmonkey features an excellent HTML tutorial as well. Be sure to study the HTML Basics, and read through the Tables section as well. As you read each section/lesson in this tutorial, click on all hyperlinked words to learn more about that concept. Be sure to click on Tools for some suggestions for good HTML editors. http://www.hotwired.com/webmonkey/authoring/
The next thing you need to do is purchase an HTML editor, which is a software program that will make it easier for you to work on an HTML document. Purchase an HTML editor locally, or visit Stroud's and download shareware versions that you can try before buying. Spend some time working with the program and get familiar with it. http://cws.internet.com/32html.html
Now comes the fun part: designing and creating your own Web site. You may want to spend some time on the Net looking at Web sites that have a design that would work well with your own business. Don't copy those sites, but simply use them as a guide.
Your HTML editor may come with some basic templates for creating Web pages. You may want to use those templates to begin with, until you get more experienced in HTML and Web design.
TIP! Keep the word count for your Web pages between 200 and 600 words. Try to begin the page with text, rather than a graphic, which will help you with the search engines. Save the main page of your site as index.html.
If you're looking for graphics or navigational bars for your site, visit the Clip Art Searcher. http://www.webplaces.com/search/
Also, Boston University offers a helpful guide for finding and using images on the Net. It includes copyright issues, download instructions, and more. http://www.bu.edu/library/training/webimages.htm
When working with images, you may want to download and try a Graphics Viewer that will allow you to view, create, or manipulate images. Visit Stroud's for some shareware versions. http://cws.internet.com/image.html
In Part 3, we'll learn how to place our pages on the Web.
This article was written by Robin Nobles, a professional freelance writer and the Director of Training at the Academy of Web Specialists (http://www.academywebspecialists.com). Over the past few years, she has trained thousands of people in her online and onsite courses in search engine positioning strategies and has written three books that can be ordered through Amazon. Visit the Academy's training Web site to learn more about their online courses: http://www.onlinewebtraining.com. Or, visit Robin's personal Web site at http://www.robinsnest.com.
