Create A Website Tips
There's a widely-held misconception about what it takes to create a website, even accounting for differences across class, gender and educational levels. It is generally thought that a degree in computer design or programming is necessary for web design, or, at least a lot of hands-on experience with computers. Having done web design and coding for eight years for many clients with widely-differring needs, I know that the opposite is true. Designing and creating a website is not only enjoyable but is not as difficult as the general public seems to think.
It helps when beginning this process to have in mind already how you wish to go about the design phase when you create a web site. Graphic software helps, but in all honesty, it is no longer wholly needed these days if you're just creating a simple site for your own use. A lot of free image sites exist which can resize images or even add graphic effects, or else make changes like changing photos to black and white.
When you create a website, many kinds of services all over the internet are available, for either free web hosting or paid web hosting. For those who are new to creating websites, it might be better to set up with free hosting at first as you learn skills for creating better and more improved sites. The advantage of using free hosting services is that many such sites also provide free HTML editors.
WYSIWYG editors are the best option for HTML editing for those who are new to web site layout and design. WYSIWYG means "What You See Is What You Get," meaning that how the layout appears on the editing page is how it will appear once you publish it. For those who are unfamiliar with the terminology this is basically a way of coding a site in a simpler way than coding by hand in a .txt file.
After you have gained some experience with designing and coding, you might want to thing about moving on from a free WYSIWYG editor to more advanced software to develop your websites. Some editors have the option of switching between a WYSIWYG editor and writing code to build your site. As your coding skills advance, this may be a better option for you than a strictly WYSIWYG editor.
In any case, learning to create a website can be a fun and challenging pasttime. As you grow more skilled in creating for the web, you can even grow to offer your design skills for sale in helping others create sites. This is how I started with web design back in high school, and today I do this for a living. While it takes patience and experimentation, in time, it is a fun skill that anybody can learn to do.
Contrary to popular belief, it doesn't take a degree or a great deal of training to create a website. There are a wide variety of options available to make the process relatively easy for even the novice. One of the easiest ways for a beginner to create a web site is through the use of a WYSIWYG editor, short for "What You See Is What You Get." These editors allow you to lay out a page piece by piece and see, as you work, exactly what the page will look like to its visitors. This is much easier than putting together a site by coding it yourself.
Published July 15th, 2008
Filed in Business, Home Business, Internet