Arian Teaches Us How to Build a Web Site

So maybe you have some photos you want to share with others.  Flickr and Picasa and such are nice, but don't fully do the trick.  Or maybe you want a place to show off your new audio or video skills.  Or maybe a friend is starting a small business and you want to help promote it.  Or, quite possibly, you just want to learn additional modern media skills and need a way to practice them.

How about your own Web site?

To get us started, I turn to our colleague Arian, who already knows more than a thing or two and is still trying to learn more.  She set out trying to teach us all how to do CSS, but I asked her to back up a bit and start at the beginning.

Before you read Part 1 in a series from Arian, check out her her own Web site (note among other things that she taught herself a lot of these multimedia skills ...)

Here's Part 1 of several from Arian:

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After I sent my first round of CSS blog entries, Paula made a keen observation. Without any knowledge of how to begin to put up a Web site, delving into CSS is pretty pointless. It’d be like teaching algebra to 4-year-olds: They’d quickly grow glossy-eyed, yawn, then start poking each other as entertainment. The result in this case would be similar. Although, maybe less poking.

 

So, she suggested I take a few steps back and start from the beginning. This won’t be a step-by-step “how-to.” Instead, it’s an overview of what you need to know before you begin and a few suggested starting points. When you try this on your own, you might find other resources: better tools, or better deals on domain names and hosted services, etc. When you do, please share by contributing to the comments section.

 

I’ll touch on two technical requirements for putting up a Web site: domain registration in today's post and Web hosting in tomorrow's. These are things you’ll need to know and do before you even start building your site.

 

Creating a Web Presence

 

Domain Names:

 

Everything connected to the Internet has a unique domain name, for example: ap.org or typepad.com. No two domain names are alike, much like there’s only one address to your home.

 

You can get a free domain from a number of places on the Web. Geocities is a good place to start. You get the domain and the hosting service (which I’ll go into next) gratis and within seconds. Plus, it steps you through the entire process.

 

If you want to pick your domain name, say, MyDogRocks.com, you purchase the right to use it for a certain period, usually a year. I like to go to Dotster.com to check on the availability of a domain. They have a “Find a Domain” feature that searches all the extensions (.com, .net, .info, etc.). Dotster , as well as other domain registration services, can also recommend domain names if the name I’m searching for is already taken, for example MyDogTotallyRocks.com.

 

Once I find a domain I like, I could go through Dotster to purchase the domain. But like with many of the things I have mentioned or will mention, the Web has countless other options from cheap to expensive. 

 

Now that you own a domain name (or assigned one from Geocities), you can even create e-mail addresses, e.g. arian@MyDogTotallyRocks.com. This feature and many more benefits of domain name registration are accessed via the control panels after you obtain Web hosting… which leads me to… (wait until tomorrow ...)