About Do-It-Yourself Website Building
Building your own website can be a valuable learning experience, both in terms of what it teaches about the process and what you will learn about yourself, your talents and objectives.
You'll need a plain-text editor or HTML editing program, a graphics program, a domain name, hosting service and both the Internet Explorer and Firefox browsers, as well as other browsers if possible.
Before you build your website
Sit down and make several lists.
First, make a list of websites you like, even if they're nothing like the one you plan to build. Identify what it is that you like about them.
Next, make a list of sites you dislike and the reasons you dislike them.
Looking at the two lists you just made, think of how the navigation works on the various websites. Is it simple, or are most of the links difficult to find or even broken? Are the websites attractive and readable, or have they used too many fonts and/or weird color combinations?
Think of a very few fonts you like. These should be fonts that most people already have on their computers. If the fonts you select are unusual, you take a chance that your pages won't render the way you intended on other people's computers.
A website is most readable with a white or very light-colored background. Choose two or three accent colors that go together well and use them sparingly throughout.
Your intended audience
Make a list of what you know about your intended audience--not just the types of people you hope will visit the site, but the equipment they'll be using. Do they surf the web on mobile devices? Do they want or expect fancy graphics and video, or would these elements just annoy them?
After you build a webpage, test it with the Internet Explorer and Firefox browsers and other browsers if you have them. Look at it in different screen resolutions. A webpage doesn't need to look identical under all circumstances, but it should always be readable.
Other considerations
What do you want your website to do? Even in the beginning, a three-page website with the purpose of providing links to articles you've written is a vastly different project than a forum that will eventually have thousands of members, complex graphics, merchandise for sale and a paid membership section.
Why do you want to build it yourself? To learn? To save money? To have complete control over it? To show off your website-related skills?
What will you do if the project becomes more than you can handle? Do you have a friend who designs and builds websites who could help, or will you need to devote some time to researching the topic of website building on the Internet?
Hosting and domain registration services
These three companies offer website hosting for less than $5 a month. Low-priced domain registration is available through their links.
http://www.lunarpages.com - LunarPages
http://www.godaddy.com - GoDaddy
http://www.hostgator.com - HostGator
Graphics and colors
The Color Blender at http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/color-blend/ provides HTML color codes. You can download and save it to your computer.
The Gimp is a full-featured open source graphics program. Download it from http://www.gimp.org/downloads/.
