How to Make a Simple Website

I was in the (IT) Information technology field for over 15 years and somehow as of 2008 I still did not know how to create a web site. I did some research and once I got everything in place I was able to create my first web site in 5 minutes. In order to create a web site you are going to need a few things. I am assuming you have already purchased a domain name and that you have access to the back office of your hosting company. The reason you will need this is to get the ftp information including id and password to copy the finished site once completed. Ok, let get started.

The first thing I did after I got the domain and back office set up was I purchased Adobe Dream Weaver. Coming from a technology background I found this software to be very user friendly. If you do not find it to be friendly for you then just do a quick search on the internet for dream weaver tutorials and you will be presented with a slew of FREE videos on how to use dream weaver step by step. Once I got the program installed I watched a 2 minute video that I found from a quick search, and then I picked a template and just made the title, description and body changes I wanted. I also added a few images to spruce it up a bit and added my contact information. That's it, I was done. I did not need anything fancy, but I had just started a business and just wanted something up quick so I could order business cards and have an internet presence for credibility. This really only took 5 minutes to put together.

Now that I had created the page, I needed to upload it to my domain so it would be live. I went into my back office in Godaddy.com and was able to navigate to my ftp information. Ftp stands for file transfer protocol, basically meaning you will be transferring information to your site and using this as the protocol or means to deliver the information. It is usually the same address as your web address but it begins with ftp:// instead of http://. So if your web address is say http://www.companyxyz.com, then the ftp address would be ftp://companyxyz.com. However, it's still best to get it from the back office because you will still need the login credentials to access the site. I then downloaded a free program call FileZilla and quickly installed and set up a connection for my ftp site. Once this was setup I connected to my domain and copied the site files up. The site files consist of the index.html file and all images. This is all that a single page site written in html consists of. Make sure you keep a copy of all of the files on your local hard drive. I then typed in my domain name and there it was. My site was live and I admired my work for about 5 minutes. You will quickly realize that you want more and more things on it. Just search for the free videos online and you will be amazed at how much and how quick you will learn after just watching a few videos and playing with dream weaver.

This information is intended to give a broad overview of the steps it takes to get started making a simple web site. I hope I have answered questions you have and provided a little bit more clarity for you.

To your success.