How To Make A Web Site

Making a web site can give you an outlet for your creativity, help people find and get in touch with you, and teach you new skills. It's pretty easy these days to make your own web site, and in some cases, putting a web site online is free.

Step one: learn HTML

HTML, short for hypertext markup language, is what many web sites are written in. It's a markup language, not a programming language, so it isn't that hard to learn. There are plenty of HTML tutorials online, many of which probably do not take long to do. Just use a search engine to look for HTML tutorials.

Step two: figure out who will host your web site

If you don't mind spending some money to get your site online, you should look for web hosting. A web host is a company that will let you put your web page files onto their computers, which will make your web page files available on the Internet. There are plenty of web hosts out there. If you're new to making and publishing web pages, you should go with the most popular web hosts, because they tend to have simpler pricing structures, with hosting plans geared toward individuals.

If you don't really have money to spend, look for a place that offers free web hosting. Most such places have restrictions, like not allowing you to choose what your URL looks like, or requiring that you have ads on your site.

If you really only want to do some specific task on the web, like making a journal, services like Wordpress.com and LiveJournal give you a free place to post journal entries.

Step three: register a domain name

Some web hosts also provide domain name registration services. Search for a domain name that you want to register. Then you will have to pay a yearly fee to keep that domain name registered. Be sure to register it on time, because there are companies out there that do nothing but buy domain names that people have allowed to expire. Once this happens, you might have to pay a lot of money to get it back!