You may want to build your own website, but may be overwhelmed with all the technical terminology and jargon. This article will help you find out how to build websites and the steps that you should take to create and maintain a website of your own. Some of the questions answered in this article include, what is ftp, how to register domain names and where can you find more information on constructing your website.

What are the essentials of creating a website?

With so many options and so much technical jargon, creating a website can be a task full of confusion and stress. To begin your journey in website hosting, you need a few basic items.

• Basic computer skills
• An accessible personal computer
• Internet Access
• Web site construction tool or HTML Editor
• A site to host your website such as Yahoo

Given the above attributes and a decent amount of determination and patience, you will be well on your way to building your own website. Before you actually begin building your website, you'll need to have a topic or focus for the site. Will it focus on your family, movies or the laws of physics? Is it going to be mainly informational or will it be for entertainment purposes or both? Is it going to be text based or will you be using picture and video files? Will you include a chat room or forum, or will there be no personal communication of any sort?

Using your personal computer and an WYSIWYG html editor, better known as a what you see is what you get html editor, begin designing and formatting your website. Some common WYSIWYG html editors include Microsoft FrontPage, Dreamweaver and GoLive. These programs contain templates which guide you through the process of designing and creating your website. Unfortunately, when using a WYSIWYG html editor like FrontPage or Dreamweaver, you may loose some control over the layout of your website. You may also want to create your website from scratch using html encoding in a program like notebook. This approach to website construction can be somewhat complicated for the novice computer user, but it allows the most freedom in website layout and design. There are numerous web site tutorials that give you clear step by step instructions on how to build websites.

The Pros and Cons of the various web hosting formats

Now that you've gotten your website designed and formatted you need to get it onto the internet, but how exactly do you do that? The first thing you need to do is decide whether or not you want your own domain name? If you are only constructing your site for fun or practice, you may want to consider using an ISP domain name or by having your site hosted through a free website hosting company.

By registering and maintaining your own domain name, you have your own personalized internet address. Registering a domain name does cost a small amount of money, usually $10 to $30. This fee is used to input your URL or web address into a giant database of websites. Having your own domain name is preferred if you will be using it for business purposes, such as the storefront for an online company. However this is an added and often unnecessary expense if the website will solely be used as a hobby or if it is a practice website. Once you've registered your domain name, you will need to locate a hosting company, rent space on their server for your website, and provide them with your URL. This is necessary so that your website can be made available to the public and ensures that other servers can locate your site.

Many times, websites can be hosted for free through a free online hosting site. These sites will typically assign your website a URL as an extension of their web address. For instance your free address may read something like this: www.aol.com/countrystar. A URL such as this may seem tacky if you are trying to run a business or storefront from it, not to mention it is longer and more difficult to remember.

Once you've registered a domain name and selected an appropriate website hosting company, you need to upload your page onto the internet. To do this you will need to use a FTP program otherwise known as a file transfer protocol program. The FTP program is essentially the means to move your website onto the internet. Many programs have a set up FTP program as does Internet Explorer version 5.0 and higher.

Once you've gotten your internet site uploaded using a FTP program, and have followed any instructions from your hosting company, your website should be ready to launch onto the internet.

Below are a few websites that offer free online web building tutorials:

• www.killersites.com
• www.webdesignfromscratch.com
• www.htmlgoodies.com

Now that you know what is FTP and how to build websites, you're one step closer to constructing and publishing your own website. Good Luck!

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