Do You Wish You Could Make a Web Site?

by Phyllis Wheeler

Getting into the global marketplace is easier now than ever before. The Internet allows you to tap that marketplace from your living room. But what if you don’t know how to make a Web site?

The world is changing in other ways too. No longer do we expect to get a 9-5 job that lasts many years. In fact, short-term contract jobs without benefits are becoming more and more common. This uncertainty might cause you to consider starting a small business in your spare time. If you get the knack, you may even be able to make enough money to make it your sole income.

But you are a novice, and you aren’t moving on this idea. Plus, you think you can’t afford a Web site.

There are plenty of tools out there on the Internet that will help you. They are template Web sites that do nearly all the work for you. But there is one problem with them: you don’t learn the skills you need to know to manage the site! As a Webmaster you will need to some HTML, the formatting language for Web sites. You’ll need to add affiliate links, shopping carts, and clickable ads — three of the big tools you’ll need for earning money on your site.

Learning HTML–it sounds a lot harder than it is. Actually you only need to know a bit of HTML, not the whole subject. You can look for a tutorial on it, or a book. If you sign up for a class at the local junior college, you’re probably learning more HTML than you need.

You will need to use Web site creation software. There are basically three alternatives for you: Macromedia Dreamweaver, which is several hundred dollars; Microsoft Front Page, which costs around $100; and Nvu, which is free. Nvu is open source software, originally part of Netscape-that browser that was a competitor to Internet Explorer in what seems like the distant past now. Open-source software is publicly available software that is maintained by programmers on their own time, usually because they want to provide us with an alternative to Microsoft.

You’ll need Web site hosting, too. (That’s renting space on someone’s server in cyberspace.) You can pay a lot of money for plenty of bells and whistles. But what you really need to get started is a simple hosting solution. You can find these for as little as $25 per year, including domain registration (that’s reserving a domain name that is just for you, such as www.myspot.com). The secret is usually this: the hosting company wants you to deal with them for both domain hosting and domain registration. You can put “cheap domain hosting” into a search engine and look for simple, user-friendly solutions.

One of the products that the Internet has generated in the past couple of years is an e-book. That’s information that you pay for and download immediately. It’s in the form of a document that you can read from your computer or print out on your printer. In our instant-gratification culture, it’s catching on. If you’re budget-conscious, plan to use Nvu, and look in the search engines for an e-book on how to use it!

About the Author:

Make sure you sign up for Phyllis Wheeler’s six excellent open-source, no-cost Internet business lessons. If you want to make a web site on a budget, you can do it using Phyllis Wheeler’s e-book Web Site ABC’s and open-source, no-cost software Nvu.