Writing Your Own Web Site

It's Easier Than You Think

It's really not rocket science and there are so many things around to help you now, that writing your own website is a bit of a doddle!

Basically a web site is written in HTML - that stands for Hyper Text Markup Language - and while that may sound intimidating it#39;s really very simple. A 'markup' language means that you tell the browser what you want it do at the beginning of a piece of text, and you tell it to stop doing it when you no longer want the effect to display.

For example, you have often seen bold text on a web site and to tell the browser where to start and where the stop making the text bold, you just put a tag at the beginning and the end of your text. Thus <b>bold text</b> would show as bold text in the browser, the <b> telling it where to start and </b> telling it to end, but these tags are only instructions to the browser, not displayed to the viewer.

Don't be put off by web designers telling you that you need to buy a very expensive package called 'Dreamweaver' and then go on expensive courses in order to use it properly! You can do that if you like, but you can also produce a website with a free text editor like notepad or wordpad and a basic knowledge of HTML.

You can write your entire site in HTML just telling the browser to start and stop an effect by putting simple tags at the start and end of the text you want to effect! You may hear people talk about CSS as well - Cascading Style Sheets. Again, no panic! These are simply files that can make writing and maintaining your site much easier.

Packages and Templates

I've already mentioned Dreamweaver but that is an expensive option to start with. Microsoft FrontPage is a free package that will enable you to get a web site up very easily and quickly.

There are also loads of Templates around that basically you just drop your information into the spaces provided - just put Template Sites into Google and you'll find loads! Some free and some you pay for!

If you open even a very basic account with 1and1.co.uk you will have access to a free website creator where you can choose from loads of templates and publish your site all at the click of a mouse

Have a Go!

You have nothing to lose by having a go with FrontPage or downloading a free Template and playing with it, or playing with the website creator at 1and1.co.uk but whatever you do it helps if you understand a little HTML.

There are loads of free tutorials at W3 Schools and you can learn all about HTML there, as well as CSS and much more besides.

Whether you use a designer or write your own, there a just a few more things worth knowing.