Like where to even get a website. What content to put on it. You know, everything.

Real Websites 101: you need a domain name (the thing you type into the web browser to find the site). I purchased camp's through 1and1.com for a reasonable rate (they were having a promotion, under $10). More complicated is the server space where the website actually sits. I have some personal space that I get because I'm a university student that the camp website is currently occupying for free, though we will be migrating it over to the Crossroads server soon and then we'll have to pay. I know you can get the server space for under $100, but I don't know about free. A lot (all?) of the commercial server services will give you a browser page through which you can upload your pages securely, and will walk you through how to link up your domain name and the pages on their server. I think my dad uses me.com for my parents' square dancing club website. These services also usually give you 1+ email accounts.

You'll need some sort of program to design the pages (you might know this already, from what you said in your email, but I figured I'd put it in anyway). I use Dreamweaver (complicated, not for the faint of heart) and Crossroads wants me to move over to Microsoft Web Expressions 3. If you have a Mac, I recommend you at least start with iWeb, which comes with the iLife suite and is very intuitive - it helps set up templates and you can have a website up in no time. Then you can muck around with other programs if iWeb doesn't give you all the functionality you want.

Fake Websites 101: get a free gmail account, use it to set up a free blog on blogger, design the blog to have the content you want on all the side bars, post announcements as blog entries. I've seen people do mostly for personal websites, but I don't see why it wouldn't work for a group website, too.

P.S. I should add that Crossroads is a server some friends set up in their basement, not a commercial service.

quote:

---

If your ISP provides webhosting, that might be the best way, but if not, you may need to check around.

---

Well, see, that's something I hadn't thought of. Looks like my ISP does provide a free personal webpage. And that's probably a reasonably good place to start. The price is right, anyway.

I suggest you start with a blog before you get a full website. You can arrange your blog just like a regular website, but a lot of stuff is already done for you.

If you go to www.wordpress.com, you can get started for free. They take you through step by step to get set up.

My site is a wordpress blog and it has worked out just fine. You can post your thoughts and even have pages with your work.

You can move out from there, but I wouldn't fret about getting a full website started at the beginning. Get comfortable with posting and getting your web presence started.

I buy my domain names from networksolutions.com, because that's just where you bought domain names "back in the day" when I was first looking into this. I own a couple - one is my author's name, one is our family website. We host one website from our home computer (our ISP permits this, though we technically have a potentially changing IP addy, it's only changed twice since we've been on this service going on 4 or 5 years, and that just requires an update to a logfile somewhere...that I always blank on where and my brother-in-law has to remind me of.) My authorname website I may do via a blog, I haven't decided yet, so for now I'm just sitting on the domain name so that nobody else buys it (I have an extremely common last name, so it's kind of important for me...your mileage may vary.)

Wordpress looks interesting, too. Not sure how good a blogger I'll be, though. I never was any good at journals, etc.

All you really need is Notepad. Of course, if you want to go fancy, you download Programmer's Notepad for the color coding of the html, css, javascript, php, asp, etc. etc. :P

I can do basic HTML coding but I fear times may have got ahead of me.

Hm. This wordpress thing looks promising but if it's free there's usually commercials on it. Does anyone use it?

In steps:
1) Design your website and how it looks all on your hardrive first (1 day to 1 month depending on how complex):
- Learning sources: W3school.com; software I use is Notepad++ since it has color codes and autofill - and it's freeeee!
- I suggest downloading free template websites and see how the simple ones are written. Then you can vary them to suit your own design.
- you can also search for free buttons or banner designs
- Don't reinvent the wheel. If you need some special quirk to your website, chances are the code for it is in an online library somewhere for you to cut, paste, and modify slightly.

2) Decide on a name for you website and register it:
- I use godaddy.com to search for possible names - it's usually about 10 bucks to register the name, plus some extra fees for each year
- I paid about 200 bucks to hold the name for 5 years with some extra frills (email, privacy). They'll explain it all

3) Find a webhosting service to suit your needs:
- Your needs depend on how much space you need for your website
- If you plan to put a lot of video you need lot's of space and lot's of bandwidth.
- If it's just text and pictures - it might add up to <10MB - you won't need all the space, bandwidth, or processor power.
- These days you share the same computer (server) with other websites, so if your website is hogging the computer cpu the webhosts may charge you extra. Lesson: always read the fine print of your contract.
-Godaddy provides basic webhosting for a fee - it's not the best, but you can try it first and find better ones later.

4) Upload your finished, poliahed website using an FTP software.
- Go daddy has instructions how to upload your website.
- You can use a variety of FTP (file-transfer-protocol) programs,
- I like FileZilla, which is freeeee!

And - You're done! That's all there's to it.

If you have a very complicated website in mind - likes forums, or 100s of automatically generated webpages that change everyday (like the news), etc, then you should get special software to handle it - But only if you want to handle it all by yourself. At this point, I would just hire an expert to set up and manage the whole thing, lol.

Hope that helps,

Meredith, let me know how your eventual web site exploits go for you.

Of course, I also do my own web design, outside of wordpress.

Nothing fancy. I used Microsoft Frontpage, and have used it for many years. It suits all my needs.

Also, if you have an internet service provider, then it's very likely you have a default amount of web storage space alloted to you through whatever package you've got. I am with comcast and they give me a gig with every e-mail "slot" I fill. Which is great because I can have a web site (or sites) and not have to pay extra for a domain.

Examples:

http://home.comcast.net/~ststcsolda/

http://home.comcast.net/~brad.r.torgersen/

I will probably get a domain in the not too distant future if my sales are good in 2010. Then I will need to worry about truly "branding" myself, and I don't want to see my name get snatched by a domain horder trying to cash in on my "brand," as it were.

Until then, my service provider's built-in web storage works fine for my needs.

My choice for my writer's site? I have a hosted domain (owasm.com) but I downloaded Wordpress as my own site software. The nicest thing is that you can choose how you want your site to look without going through all the design process. If you wish to change the look of your site, you just pick a different design and everything shifts automatically over to the new look. (Unless you are using your own images in the code.) Images that you embed in the content stay the same.

Using stock software saves you a great deal of hassle unless you are really intent on having your very own original look.

quote:

---

Anyone uses LiveJournal?

---

Raises hand.

1) Never allow a webdesigner or an ISP to register your domain for you. Do it yourself. The person who purchases the domain name owns it, because the purchase will be tied to their credit card. That means they control the passwords and access to allow you to make ANY changes.

I tell my customers: "Think of it like you are buying a warehouse, but you give someone you really don't know the keys (passwords), and have no ability to actually get in and move stuff yourself. If that person/business flakes out on you, you can look in the windows but you can't remove stuff, bring in new stuff, or move stuff around."

I've had to clean up after other web designers who have moved, gotten too busy, gotten too "don't care anymore." It's a pain to try to wrestle a domain away from the person who registered it, particularly if they are being surly about things or non-responsive.

2) When you buy your domain, buy the hosting service from the same provider.

Regardless of who you use, and I prefer www.GoDaddy.com, you are minimizing your headaches if you don't have to play the game of "No, it's THEIR fault" when something on your website doesn't work. The reality is making any major change to your website (adding features, changing ISP, etc. usually involves a series of steps and it's a whole lot easier if one company can handle the changes start to end.

And for those who don't know what the difference is, domain name is the URL, or www.myname.com type name. Hosting is the rental of the actual storage space where your website files will reside, using a computer hooked into the internet 24/7.

3) Start small.

If you don't know what you would put on a website, then don't leap to that stage just yet. If you have a clever domain name, go ahead and purchase the name. But you don't have to buy hosting until you are ready to put web files online. Try blogging first (some have suggested www.LiveJournal.com, which I use and like) and figure out what sort of content you want to have online. Research sites of authors, and see the type of content they have online.

4) Learn.

If you are fearless and want to learn web design yourself, you can go to www.lynda.com and for $25 a month take tutorials on any web design software you want. (In fact, they offer tutorials on a wide range of software.) This is the source of HOT Training, Hands-On-Training that my college class in webdesign used for their textbook. Check out the site, some tutorials are free.

Do research on "Search Engine Optimization", or SEO. Learn what the Google algorithms for search are based on so you can utilize those tricks in your website.

5) Experiment.

If you are super-fearless, you can download a 30-day free trial of any Adobe software (1 time only), like Dreamweaver, and play with it to see what you think about it. Go to www.Adobe.com. Dreamweaver isn't cheap, however. It's professional software, and retails for several hundred dollars.

Or, you can check out the free linux-based software, like Joomla. Be prepared to spend a lot of time trying to figure out their manual written by some techie geeks who are more in love with code than I'll ever be.

I know GoDaddy has a web design interface; I'm not sure if it costs extra or not since I don't personally have a need for it. GoDaddy has a phone number you can call, and their support and sales staff are super helpful and knowledgeable... which is the reason I like 'em. Google Business Apps has a website interface too, but I think there's a fee for it. Again, never needed it; not sure of the cost.

Good luck, but don't spend money until you have a purpose in mind.