lifestyles

You have something to say to the world, or you at least want to show pictures of your cat, and a personal web site seems to be the way to go about it. Looks awfully complicated though. Well, while I can't right here tell you everything there is to know about design, coding, and what makes good content, I can tell you what you need to have, what you need to learn, and where you can learn. It's actually not as tough as it might look.

First, the content: whatever you want. Don't have pictures of the cat? Show the dog then, or your fish. Maybe you want to share your opinions on the crucial issues of the day, self-publish your stories or poetry, and show you know how to do technical whiz-bang stuff. Whatever it is, somebody will read it. You need not even have all of it ready go at once. Web sites change constantly, both in design an content. It's never finished, but then again, you're never stuck with it.

What do you need? A computer is good. You probably have one if you're looking at this, and you apparently have a browser. It's better to have both Netscape and Internet Explorer since a page that looks right on one might not on the other. You can use other browsers too, but unless you're thoroughly picky or just want to encourage some browser competition, those two will cover almost everyone who'll see your site.

Next you need space on the web, and it can be had for free. Most Internet Service Providers (ISP) give free space as part of a dial-up account. If you're reading this from home, you already have such an account. Some schools and colleges will give free space to students, but you might lose it when you leave school, and there might be more restrictions on content. There are also sites that give free space in exchange for letting them add some JavaScript that puts up a small browser window with advertising when someone visits your site.

These are several web design programs available, with prices ranging from free (this site was done on Arachnophilia) to several hundred dollars for the top. You can do pretty well for under $100. Also, some web sites have ways of building pages on their sites, which might be adequate for a simple "Hey world, I exist!" page. If you want to keep it very simple and you don't mind designing by hand, you can even use a word processor.

Graphics programs also vary widely in price, from around $40 to several hundred. You might also need access to a scanner. Some web sites give away graphics for nothing more than a link to their sites. If you borrow from other sites, remember that those graphics are those sites' property and you must have permission to use them. Many people will be complimented that you want to use their stuff and permission will be granted.

Now that you have the tools to build the site and you know what goes on it, what does it look like? Do some surfing, and notice what sites work for you, which don't, and try to figure out why. Figure out what you'd like to do before worrying about how to do it. Figure out what colors will work together, whether your priority is text or graphics, and how you organize your site. It's even possible to have different pages for visitors who want more or fewer graphics, frames or no frames, or even different browsers.

Now comes the how of building a site. The basic language of building a web page is HTML (hypertext markup language). You can see what it looks like by choosing "source" or "page source" from the browser's "view" menu. You can build a simple page without knowing HTML by using a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) web writer, or build your pages on a web site's page builder. To do anything more, you need to learn the code. It's actually not that complex. A good place to start is HTMLGoodies, which I've found very useful. A site for some more advanced design is Webmonkey.There are other web tutorials as well. There are many books available for those who prefer paper.

Basic HTML is enough to build a web page. If you want to get fancy, and maybe you do if this is a serious hobby or you hope to move into a technical profession, you can get into such things as frames, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), JavaScript, and animation. This site actually uses CSS quite a bit.