Producing Your First Family Website

Have you ever wanted a website but didn't know where to start or who to ask? Fear not, it can actually be easy and fun as long as you make the right choices. Web design is normally considered to be a complex, technically demanding task. At some levels it can be, but for most kinds of Web page there are now tools that do virtually all of the hard work for you, leaving you free to get your information out there on the Web. All you need is the right software and some simple Web hosting, which you may already have as part of your Internet access provider's connection deal. If you need to find a company to host your website you'll soon realize that there are almost too many to count. You're not even limited to your own country; it doesn't matter where they are in the world, on the Internet they're only a click away. Of course, if you ever need telephone advice you'd probably be better off if you're in the same general time zone. 24 hour phone support isn't unheard of, but long distance calls can be expensive unless you use an Internet-based phone service such as Skype.

With most traditional Web production software you'll need to prepare everything before starting to assemble your pages. A few programs will do this for you too, performing tasks such as turning your digital snaps into Web-ready images as you work. This is by far the nicest and most pleasant approach, so take advantage of this if your software provides this feature.

On the Macintosh, there are some very good website creation applications around. Apple's iWeb is very easy to use, although you'll need a .Mac account from Apple to make the most of it. Alternatively, there's RapidWeaver, which is good for putting your words and pictures into ready-made templates, or Freeway Express, which is ideal for making your own free form layouts.

With RapidWeaver and iWeb you simply add a new page to your site window and choose what kind it is to be-photo gallery, newsletter, blog, and so on from a list. Photo galleries take their contents from your iPhoto library, and all the design work is done for you by the templates. These are very well designed, but in RapidWeaver you have no real say over their appearance. You get more design control with iWeb, but it is less flexible if you want to make more than one site or host it somewhere other than a .Mac account. For full design and uploading freedom, but fewer ready made templates, try Freeway Express. It guides you less but lets you design far more freely, and, like iWeb, it takes care of making images Web friendly as well as generating the Web page code for you.

Windows users will find Web Page Maker an easy and inexpensive tool for assembling page designs, although you will need to prepare your images for the Web before you add them to your pages. Another product worth trying is Nvu. This is more of a traditional Web authoring tool with acceptable layout controls and full access to the HTML code if you want it.

Getting started with a program such as Nvu isn't particularly hard, although you should prepare your images as JPEGs or GIFs first. Once you're ready to start assembling, open an Nvu page, choose Insert > Image, and pick a graphic. To make the item a layer so you can reposition it, click the Layer button next to the Font drop-down menu and drag the item by its crosshair handle. Choose Insert > Table and make a simple one-cell table, type something into it, and turn it into a layer. You can use this as a simple repositionable text box for your page design. Save your page, then choose File > Publish and enter your website's FTP details to upload it to your website.

Getting started with Freeway on the Mac is more like ordinary page layout. Start with a template for simplicity, then drag any image from iPhoto or the Finder into the page, then move it to where you want it and crop it by dragging the box handles. The graphic will be made into a Web-safe JPEG or GIF for you when you publish. Click the Graphic button and draw out a new box, then click inside it and type to make graphic headlines. For regular paragraphs of text, Click the HTML button and draw out an HTML box on your page, then click inside it and type or paste your text. Use the Inspector palette to control formatting, fine-tune its position, and so on. Choose Upload and use your website's FTP settings to publish your designs to your website.

Whatever software you use, when you've finished your pages you must upload your work for others to see it. This is fairly simple using the Publish or Upload feature of your website software and the FTP connection details of your website.

Images on your Web pages must be the right format or your visitors won't be able to see them properly. If your website software doesn't do this for you, you'll need to open and save your graphics and photos in the right way before putting them into your page layouts. The two most widely supported image formats on the Web are GIF and JPEG. It is pretty simple to know which one to use: the GIF format is best used for graphics that have lots of crisp, sharp edges and flat colors, while the JPEG format is best used for softer, more photographic subjects.

You can use Paint, or Preview on the Mac, to open and export your graphics and photos as JPEGs and GIFs, but Paint's editing features are very crude and Preview's are effectively nonexistent. For any serious image editing or correction work, you should use something like Adobe Photoshop Elements. This software also contains a simple Save for Web feature for correctly preparing your images.

When you're putting your pages together don't forget to consider how things will feel to a visitor. For example, text on a dark or busy background can be surprisingly difficult to read, and if you put dozens of pictures on one page people will have to wait longer for that page to finish loading when they visit.