Make Your Own Website
it's easy to make a start

More information and useful links here.

Everyone who has an email account with Yahoo can get a free website from Yahoo's sister, Geocities. Your website address or URL will be something like:-

www.geocities.com/my_yahoo_email_name/mypage.htm

here is a very basic web page:-

The above page could be written in Windows Notepad and saved with a suitable name - I chose index.htm as that name will readily be recognised by search engines on the net. Upload the file to your server and you've got a web site. It's as simple as that. Only then do your troubles begin - you will need to maintain your site, try to make it interesting, and publicise it. You will need to make it attractive to the search engines or they will ignore it.

Using a typewriter, we format a document, that is, control it's appearance, by using the carriage return.
Computer-based word-processing programmes use hidden codes to achieve a more advanced control.
In html, this control process is carried out using code words in plain english, enclosed in less than (<) and greater than (>) brackets.

When these codes, the so-called tags, are encountered by your browser, they are interpreted and affect the appearance of the document. Tags should not appear on your viewed page and I have used subterfuge to make them appear above. The source file for an html document contains no hidden codes. This makes it portable between different computer platforms and browser programmes.

Our html document has two standard sections:-
The head section, gives information to the browser and search engines.
The body section is where the visible text is written.
Each opening tag is matched with a closing tag, having a forward slash "/" before the keyword. Many tags can include other information - as we see with the number 3.2 in the html tag above, in this case showing the version of html we are using. Version 3.2 was simpler for amateurs to use than later versions.

I used loose methods to write my sites, but really we should plan them and should be using HTML 4.0, with CSS - cascading style sheets. These allow us to present our pages much as we would like them, rather than depend on the vagaries of various browsers.

Do name your main page index.htm or index.html as this will allow your web address to be in the simplified form - www.myServer.com/mySite - or similar. Insert links to your other pages, indicating their content, and link from them back to your index page, using the word 'home' as a label. This will avoid your reader becoming confused by loads of links they do not understand. Do, however, link from your pages to other sites whose information is relative to yours. Styling of pages can be done using CSS or HTML tables. A common practice, used by myself, is to have a full-width header section containing title information, then two columns with links on the left and content on the right, followed by a footer section containing contact and production information.
an html reference from WDG. Useful listing of HTML 4.0 and a good place to start.
style sheets reference from WDG.

Some will not feel confident about handling HTML and CSS and it has to be said that it is easy to make mistakes. It is common to use wysiwyg site producers like 'Frontpage' or 'Dreamweaver'. An alternative is to use code writers like 'Homesite' or 'First Page 2000' which protect you from making mistakes in syntax. What ever method you use, you should test your pages in three browsers - 'Internet Explorer', 'Firefox' and 'Opera'. These tests should be done using screen resolutions of both 1024 x 768 and 800 x 600. You may be surprised by the difference in results and may be able to correct short-comings in your code.
First Page 2006 - a recent version of First Page 2000
Free website maker, Nvu,
Free website maker, Namu6,

You will need to find a free hit-counter provider, in order to track the popularity of your pages. Insert their code in all your web pages. When each page is loaded, that hit is recorded by the provider. Use the words 'submit site' or similar in the search engine to do just that. Yahoo and Google are your best bets, of course, and I strongly suggest you submit to both as Yahoo is sorted by hand and Google is sorted by machine.

Try to give the search engines something to work on - the <head> sectionof your page should contain a page title that clearly and concisely indicates what your page is mainly about.

A <meta name="description" content=""> tag should contain a description of your page's content at greater length.

The search engine may choose to show the title and description when showing search results. It may also quote from your page content, so put useful content near the top.

Try to check for spelling mistakes or unpopular phrasing in case the search engine should pass you over. For instance - should it be 'website' or 'web site'? I'm not sure but you may be, or may be able to find out.

October 2008. My other website was hosted by 2IP.com, a free website host. Through no fault of their own, they are no longer able to support our sites. This brings two things to my attention:-

1) It makes your site easier to edit and your content more portable if you arrange your pages in a methodical manner. For instance, you could name all your pages without using any capital letters. You could keep each subject in it's own sub-directory. Your images can go in various sub-directories as required. It is useful to have a sub-directory labelled resources. Here you can keep javascripts and graphics etc.

2) There are many providers of free web hosting - you do not need to stick to Geocities. When finding a free web host, try to find what they can and cannot do for you. As the service is free, you can expect a catch. Will they allow you to use an ftp client to upload and download your files? Where is their advertising going to appear on the page? You will have noticed that Geocities run a Yahoo search engine at the right hand side of the page. Others will run various boxes, headers and footers.

list of several free website hosts | another one | and more | and another