How to Create a Website


Example web page template lay outAnyone can create a website!! Yes - that includes YOU!!

Creating a successful website is a lot more difficult.

A successful website is one that receives traffic from the search engines, provides valuable information or products to its visitors and inspires those visitors to link to and share the website with friends and associates.

A successful website requires research, planning and a lot of hard work.

Our tutorial is designed to give you a basic understanding of the research, planning and construction of your website.

Research and Planning

Since the underlying goal of any website is to attract visitors, the Research section of our website will deal with finding the right keywords that relate to the content of your site. Even if you are building your website with a tool that doesn't require a knowledge of HTML coding, you should complete this research before you start cranking out web pages.

The Planning section of our website deals with the aspects of structuring content, choosing colors and the layout of web pages.

What's Your Skill Level?

Find your level:

BeginnerBasic SkillsAdvanced

You've never created a web page. You have no idea of the process of creating web pages and publishing them to the World wide Web.

You have a basic knowledge of HTML. You can create simple web pages with a text or HTML editor, link them together and view them in a browser. You know how to publish webpages on the WWW.

You've published websites using HTML. You want to expand your knowledge of creating web pages with divisions and CSS in order to make your own website template.


Steps for Each Skill Level

You should complete the sections on research and planning a website, before you continue.

Beginners

1...Learn to Build Your First Page and view it in a browser.

2...Read overviews: What you need to create a web site. and How to Build a Website
     Just skim this information to get an idea of what's involved in publishing websites to the WWW.

3...Learn to use a simple HTML editor of your choosing. We recommend AlleyCode .
     AlleyCode includes tutorials for learning to use it. (Help - Quick Start Tutorial - Build )
     Learn to use it before you start building actual web pages.

4...Study these lessons in our HTML tutorial and other resources:

  1. Basics of Building Web Pages (Lessons 1 - 5)
  2. How to Create a Website with HTML
  3. Experiment with other tags in our HTML Tutorial
  4. Recommended Reading: Download a Free Chapter of the ebook, Save the Pixel


Basics Skills

If you know how to create web pages and link them together, you should concentrate on building web pages with as little HTML code as possible.

Study these lessons in our HTML tutorial and other resources:

  1. Basics of Building Web Pages (Lessons 1 - 5)
  2. Study the lesson on Choosing Colors
  3. Study the lesson on Webpage Layout
  4. Recommended Reading: Download a Free Chapter of the ebook, Save the Pixel


Advanced

If you've already published websites to the internet and you are interested in creating your own website template using divisions and CSS (style sheets), we've developed a very simple method. Start Here

To speed the process get one of our Easy CSS Templates

Recommended Reading: Download a Free Chapter of the ebook, Save the Pixel - This is one of the best ebooks I've ever read on the subject of Simple Web Design. It includes many visual examples of website redesigns. Beginners and advanced website authors will benefit from this book.

Choosing a Web Host

Many people choose their web host by price and the advertised amount of web storage space and bandwidth they offer. This is the worst way to choose a web hosting company. Always look for the best possible Technical Support first.

This is the main reason we recommend Yahoo Small Business Web Hosting. Year after year they are rated as one of the best hosts when it comes to supporting their customers.

Build your website with their tools or your own.

They even offer support for some third party website building tools.

A Word About CMS and Blogging

If you are planning a website that will require membership and interaction with visitors, you may want to consider a Content Management System or BLOG.

A CMS like Joomla! or BLOG like WordPress requires Very Minor Coding Experience and can be easily installed on your web space using a script installer provided by your web host. Joomla! is also well documented with downloadable manuals and visual tutorials. WordPress' features and documentation are improving on a regular basis.

CMS offers built in features like membership registration, site search, user feedback, polls and other interactive tools.