Finding a Home
I am no expert, but I'll share some links and info to get you started.
To begin, you'll need a place to start building. I'm currently using
Freeservers.
You can start off by using templates to build pages so you don't need to know html.
You'll find it's very easy once you get started.
Some sevices offer a drag-and-drop system for page building which tends to give you
more control over the appearance than the templates.
For many other choices in hosting services
you can go to The Free Site or
head over to Free Webhosts or check out
Find My Free Host.
Unless, you want to get right into html, verify that the hosting service you want to
use offers a page building program. You may want to get the feel of a few different
hosting services to see which one you are most comfortable with. If you do a little research
you will find an amazing variety of URLs (Universal Resource Locators) available so
you can pick one that appeals to you.
HTML
The Free HTML Course at About.com
is a great way to start learning html (Hyper Text Markup Language). This is a basic course that would come in your
email. A more comprehensive online tutorial is at W3 Schools.
When you just need some quick references you can go to the
HTML Cheatsheet
or the HTML Quick List.
Another great site I recently found is The HTML Survival Kit.
If you need to know the codes to get just the right colors, check out
Color Codes.
When you're ready to make your site "sticky" (interesting enough for people to come back),
there is an abundance of content at Free Sticky
and Find Sticky
How's it look?
When you think you have a nice looking site started, give it the viewability test. (Is viewability a word?)
Download another browser than the good old IE that you are used to. Sites can look very different in
other browsers. It can be a frustrating puzzle getting your site to look good in several browsers and a
good one to try is Mozilla Firefox .
You may even like it well enough to switch. If you want the best of both worlds, try
Netscape. It offers the ability to
change your rendering
engine on a site-by-site basis between Internet Explorer and Mizilla Firefox.
Check back soon. I'm going to be adding sections on page transitions, java scripts, cascading style sheets
and flash animation.
Email me
if you have any comments, questions or suggestions.
