This is to give new designers step by step instruction to produce their first basic website, this is not aimed to be a 'how to make the perfect website' tutorial it is solely to outline the basic principles and structure. There are many different ways to create a website, some better than others, there are also many different programs you can use to create a website faster and easier.
This short course will take you through the various steps to help you make your first website with ease
This is what you will need to create your own website:
- A domain name and webspace to store your website.
- Text Editor / HTML Editor to create the pages.
- FTP Program or a means of uploading your files to your web host.
- Graphics program to create any images you may require.
The first thing on the list is somewhere to host your site and if needed get a domain name, if you already have a host then continue on to the next part Programs.
There are lots of different web hosting companies all offering different services, some offer free hosting (which may suit your first site) but they may put adverts on your site, they are however very useful for practicing. There are deals out there which make having your own hosting very cheap indeed, we will look at these now.
When looking for a host there are a few important things to keep in mind, for instance, as this is your first site then you may need help with basic things, which some hosts simply won't do.
Other things to consider are what you will need for your particular site, for example how much space you need to store your pages, how much bandwidth you need (explained below), and what if any special extras you need to create your site.
First, let's look at how much web space you might need, this is, as you may have guessed, how much physical space you need to store your web pages and images.
If the site is going to be less than say 200 pages then 50Mb will be ample as the average web page should be between 2Kb and 50Kb, so this would leave plenty of room for any images you may want to use (200 times 50Kb is around 10Mb).
Bandwidth is a measurement of how much data (information) can be transferred over a set period of time, for instance every time someone looks at a page/image on your website this increases your bandwidth use.
The average hosting company offers between 1Gb (1024 Mb) and 20Gb a month. So the calculation for the bandwidth would be the size of the pages/images viewed by each visitor times how many visitors per month.
Other extras you may need are a CGI-BIN which will allow you to run special scripts that can make your website more interactive, CGI stands for Common Gateway Interface, to use CGI you will need access to a scripting language the two most popular of which are PHP and Perl.
Another extra you may need is a database to store and retrieve information, the 2 most common database systems are MySQL and Microsoft Access, which one you use will depend on your host. We will soon be putting up a course on PHP and MySQL which will get you started.
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