Create Your First Home Page in 3 Easy Steps

It is quite easy to create and publish your own home page for either personal or business reasons. All you need is a domain name, a web hosting account, and a basic knowledge of how websites are put together. You can create your own simple home page in just a few steps using basic HTML (hypertext markup language).

Step 1: Get Your Domain Name and Host

In order to publish your own home page, you need a domain name and a web host. Pay $10 to $20 per year for your domain registration and $10 per month for a standard hosting plan-some hosting plans include the cost of the domain (see "Resources" for an example).There are also some free web services like Webs.com that allot you a small amount of space to host a web page, but you will have to deal with a domain name that includes "webs.com" or a similar extension.

Step 2: Type HTML Code into Notepad

*Quick note -- do not leave a space between the caret characters and the words inside of the tags discussed.

Open up a blank file in Notepad or another simple text based program. Start writing your HTML code here. Type in < html> and then < title > tags (both opening < title >and closing < /title > tags). Enter a short two to five word title for your home page between the two title tags.

Next type in < body > tags (opening and closing). Write your desired message between the body tags-it can be a simple welcome message. Feel free to add an image in between the tags (the code is < img src=yourimage.jpg > ). You can also add links to text and images-use the tag < a href=http://www.yourlinkhere.com >, type in the text or image code, then close the tag with < /a >.

When done, close the HTML code that you just wrote with the closing tag < /html >

Name your homepage file "index.html," index.htm," "default.html" or "default.htm" (index.html is the most commonly used file name-we'll use that in this example). Your web directory will recognize any of these as your homepage so that the page will appear when you type in your web domain address (such as www.abcxyzcorp.com). See supporting links for an example of what your HTML code should look like.

Step 3: Upload it Via FTP

Download an FTP program to your computer. There are both paid (WS FTP) and free services (like FileZilla). Click "Connect," "Add Connection" or similar and type the account log-in information that was provided to you by the paid web service. Click on the "public_html" folder and place your "index.html" file there.

Visit your website address (such as abcxyzcorp.com) to view your new home page online. Edit your index.html file whenever necessary and re-upload it your site.