Getting started on your first website

Ever wanted to create a website but had no idea where to get started? No worries, I’ll guide you through the simple process and it will require no prior experience. Is it really that easy? After you complete my series of tutorials, it sure will be. We’ll be using the template BigSpaceLove found on Free-CSS-Templates to create a simple personal website similar to my personal website.

You don’t need to know anything. I’ll even make sure you understand the fundamentals so you can continue learning more on your own afterwards. So no, you don’t need to know how to design a web page, or even how to code one.

This series will teach you how to make a similar website pictured above

Why would I need a website anyways?

First of all, a website might serve a great variety of purposes such as the following:

• You may post your resume, CV, or portfolio online to attract potential employers
• Might want to share a hobby
• Promote a product you are selling or endorsing
• Start a community
• Simply to learn!

In reality, the possibilities are endless. It’s actually quite a good skill to have and it can pay off. While I was in highschool I managed to create websites and get paid pretty darn well for it since people think its more complicated than it looks.
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The ultimate test after you created your website, is to test it out using multiple browsers. Why? It might look great in Firefox but maybe not in Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari or Konquerer? Not your entire audience is going to use one browser.

Browsershots

Browsershots allows you to type in your website and choose from a variety of operating systems and browsers.

Once you submit your request, you’ll be shown a page where you will have to wait for your request to complete. Meanwhile, you may refresh the page and see the progress. You’ll be seeing the browser shots as they finish. A problem I see though, is that sometimes the browser takes a snapshot before a page might finish loading. That might tell you, your site isn’t loading fast enough!

So what do you do if your site doesn’t look as it was supposed to? Work on it some more until it is compatible with the most browsers possible. That way you don’t lose any visitors in the future!

Several Talk Binary Browser shots

Below are several Talk Binary browser shots. As you can see, it appears the page hadn’t completely loaded before the shot was taken. Either way, its what I expected!

So you want to learn how to code a website from the ground up? HTML is your start.

What is HTML?

HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language. It is the language that structures the format of a document with the following elements: links, images, text, and other objects.

HTML files usually have an htm or html extension and can be created with any text editor, including Notepad.

Programmer’s Notepad is an excellent free program which provides you with a nice programming environment with syntax highlighting, opening multiple tabs under its window, templates and more. I use it when I edit simple HTML files. So check it out.

Where do I start coding HTML?

With Notepad, simply open a new file. Then go to File -> Save As. Choose All Files under Save as type.

Then give your file the name homepage.html. Any name with the .html extension should work fine.
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