CREATING A PERSONAL WEB PAGE

babs - You might want to start with a "freebie" such as at http://www.freeservers.com or http://www.tripod.com. If these URLs don't work, delete the www. and try again. If you don't want any banners, the charge is very, very small - $4.95 or $5.95 a month. There is a limit on bandwidth (usage - how many hits you get). I had a guzillion hits on my freeservers site and never got those extra charges. I did opt to get rid of the banners and the charge was $5.95 a month. I also pay for my domain names at 123cheapdomains - $13.95 a year, which is about one-third what the other places charge.

The freeservers site is a family site with 75 to 90 photos I put through one of my photo programs. Both fs and t give you all kinds of tutorials. Their sites offer various "templates" - choose and then fill them in. You can change, add to, subtract, edit anytime to your heart's content. I like f.s. for ease of putting up a lot of pix. t. has more versatility. I don't spend much time at them, so they could be much better I'm sure. They're just a little bit of fun when I'm bored. You can reach my tripod site through the URL http://www.starkc.com

Incidentally, t. gives you 20 Mg!!! I've used less than 8!!! Go, have fun! Charli

MSN groups handles photographs automatically so it's an easy way for a novice. For a very simple site I'd recommend MSN.

Of course once you know a bit you can still use remotely hosted options like bravenet for your photo albums etc (this way you don't need to write your own code).

As for hosts the above are good options.

Lemme break it down a bit more:

Geocities: Easy and stable, ad supported and traffic limits. No FTP and no support for dynamic pages using ASP PHP etc.

Tripod: Pretty good, the UK version of tripod is the best but not very stable, they have no traffic limit and have free ddatabases and support PHP.

But choosing a host is easy, let's talk making it:

Start with templates. Soon I'll have templates for people to use on this site as well as any imaginable web tool.

Your host can provide templates or you can find them on the net.

----

Other stuff:

godaddy.com has cheaper domains

You can find all kinds of free graphics galleries.

When I have time I'll be doing a lot more in the way of providing webmaster resources.

Hi, Babs,

There are a number of good suggestions here for starting your own web site. You have to choose the ones you are most comfortable using, the features you want, and there's the price consideration. I'm not familiar with the MSN photo program. There are a large number of photo programs including Cute FTP in residence on this 80G computer, a networked computer with 7G, and an Iomega Zip. My favorite is Micrografx's Photo Publisher 8 - new version is "10." Very easy to use with dozens of features, special effects, etc. You can purchase the entire package for less than $50.00. It's complete with instructions and tutorials. Usually, everything comes off with practice, trial and error. Unless you want to hire a professional web designer or design services.

My very small store of computer knowledge came about over years and years of computing - starting with a vacuum tube Linotron set-up, Photon, and Alphatype machines - and all that jazz - among others, like an old double floppy Kaypro that we still own! And yet, we are learning every day. That's what so great about "this business": forever changing! We repeat, GO FOR IT! HAVE FUN ..., and come back and ask questions. Good wishes, Charli

The best advice I can give you is to get stuck in and carry on regardless! Be prepared to design the most abysmal looking sites for a while but enjoy the learning proces. There's no such thing as a website that ISN'T under constant construction and since I've got three sites of my own (one being the window to my media consultancy) I know this only too well! But MSN provide a useful starting point although be prepared to outgrow any online webdesign package - probably sooner than you think.

There really is no short cut to learning HTML - much easier than it sounds since it really isn't a programming "language" - because even if you do gravitate to a decent package like Dreamweaver, it'll need hand tweaking to get the best out of it. But don't frighten yourself with HTML before you feel ready.

And finally, think about paying for hosting rather than going for "freebies". Increasingly they limit what you can do or they pepper your site with the dreaded pop-ups or banner ads. If you want your site to have a touch of class, it probably won't come free!

Good luck to ya though. It's an excellent - if totally addictive - thing this webdesigning lark!

Well, I finally find time to check in here to this forum and find this discussion a bit late, perhaps? Here is my 4 cents:

I disagree with the other posters on this thread as to going with a paid host for a beginner. I think Craven is right in suggesting msn.com groups, because much is automatically done for you. There are amazing msn.com groups that provide every level of manager / creator with tutorials for every facet of putting a website together, starting with features and codes that can be copied and pasted to your fledgling pages.

The html editor provided by msn.com is pretty basic and common - online freebie html editors do the same things and not much more. This post field in a2k is a simple html editor, so you see the nice toolbuttons we like to play with. What this means is that you can paste your copy into a web page with just a few easy "tags" that will start you on the way to understanding basic code. A tag is a tiny (usually) and precise marker for the page. [quote]When you see the "Quote" tags applied in your own posts, you see that just slipping in the <QUOTE> before your copy and then immediately follow with </QUOTE> and there you go with a nice indented paragraph! [/quote]

I have spent the last 8 months learning html coding 'on the fly' as I tried out my experiments on a number of websites, hosts and blogs.

I found that all the freebie sites I used were great places to experiment and not think about errors or if it were a waste of $. When I learned just enough to be 'dangerous' (lol), THAT's when I converted a freebie site at bravenet.com into a paid site. I used their supplied "Zyweb Html Editor" with templates. When I used templates, it's like filling in forms instead of creating a "page". When I learned some simple html codes from tutorials, I 'bravely' stuck some changes into my previous page templates. I started with just changing the background color. How brave I was, lol!

Well, am starting to drone a bit, but I hope that this counterpoint has some use. I am totally "hooked" on the blogging and websites, so be prepared that you may realize you've lost hours and hours of a day just at the 'puter...

They can take some time if you let them.

For one example of a simple yet interesting photo site, check out www.infrareddreams.com - the site owner displays digital infrared pictures taken with ordinary digital cameras using special filters.

web page
Office 2002 comes with Frontpage. Has anyone made a web page
using this application. It does not require HTML but is based on WYSWYG.

I have, it's good for very very very basic sites. But it messes up your code.