Often I've been asked questions like:

"How hard is it to build a webpage, Richo"?

or

"How much will it cost me" ?

Here are some answers that may surprise you....

Building a basic webpage is actually really easy to do and there are a number of great options on the net you can use to keep the cost down to zero... yep, zero ... no dollars required. As long as you're prepared to invest a few hours of your time it won't be too hard at all.


So how does it work ?

Well, first you need some free webspace (called "web hosting") to put your page onto. Free webhosting companies own big, fast servers and will give you a small portion of their hard drive space to play with. Free webhosting comes with a couple of restrictions though and here's the skinny:

- They run advertising on your page. Its a pain in the butt, however not the end of the world.
- They have a limited amount of space to give you.
- They have limited bandwidth. This means the amount of data (text and pictures) your free site is allowed to move per month is limited. A rough translation of this is that only a certain number of people will be able to view your site at the same time. When you build your page remember that the less pictures you put on each page and the smaller they are, the greater the number of people that can view your site at the same time.


SET UP YOUR FREE EMAIL

There are quite a few free webhosts out there, a quick search on google will reveal a page full at least. Each one has their own ideas on how restricted their free accounts are and for the sake of simplicity in this How-To I'm going to introduce you to one I've worked with before called Geocities.

Geocities is completely free and they'll sling you 15Mb of server space to play with.

Firstly though, you will need a free Yahoo email account. Follow this link (opens in a new window) www.yahoo.com click on the "free mail - sign up" link on the top right of the page. Fill out the form and click the "create my account" button at the bottom of the page. On the next page click "continue" to get to your new email account. Its really easy and you're done.


SET UP YOUR FREE WEBHOSTING

Next we need to set up your free webhosting. Follow this link to geocities (new window) www.geocities.com and click on the "get a site for free - sign up now" button. Fill out the small form on this page and click on the "submit" button at the bottom left.

Be sure to write down your free site address so you don't lose it !! Mine was http://www.geocities.com/richo68

Click on the "build your website now" link to get to the next page.

This page is your control panel center. From here you can view statistics on how your web page is doing and also access tools you need to build and modify your creation.

The control panel

For a simple page you don't even need to know any HTML code. Geocities has some easy to use point and click tools that take all the hard work out of building your page.

Click on the "create and update" page to see the tools. The option we're going to choose is the "Yahoo Pagewizards" found on the second box down from the top. This tool will allow us to build a homepage fast !

Create and Update

You are greeted with several styles of webpage layout and colors (called templates) to choose from and feel free to pick whichever style floats your boat. Personally I'm a fan of the black background page style so I'm going to pick the "night vision" option. Click on the picture of the page you'd like to build and a small window will open, stepping you through the process.

Yahoo Pagewizards

Clicking on the "begin" button takes you to a options page, allowing you to either change your page style or preview a selection. When you've decided on a style click the "preview" button to have a look at what your finished page will look like. Once you're satisfied with your choice, close the preview window and click the "next" button.

Nightvision Style

Basic Page Preview

Enter a page title and some information you'd like people to read. You can write quite a lot of info in here if you like, there is plenty of room down the page's left hand side for text. When you're finished click the "next button".

Page Title and Text

Locate a smallish picture to put on your page. Try and stick with a pic that is 640 x 480 pixels or smaller if you can. If you have a bigger picture you want to use then re-size it before you use it or a couple of bad things things will happen:
1. Your page will display will be borked
2. Your page will load really slowly and chew up your bandwidth fast.

For reference, the picture I chose measures 420 x 366 pixels.

Click on the "use your own image" radio button, then click the "upload new image" button.

Choosing a Picture

Choose "browse" from the small window that appears and find the picture you want to use on your computer.

Browsing your Computer for a Picture

Once you have located it, click on its name and then click the "open" button.

Locating the Picture You Want to Use

That navigation window will disappear, allowing you to choose the "upload" button from the previous screen.

Choose Upload

Fill out a caption for your picture and click "next".

Caption Your Picture

This window lets you list your favorite websites for others to see. Simply erase the standard information in the boxes and write in your own. Click "next".

Default Links

My Links

In the next window you can tell the world a little about yourself. Fill in a little personal information if you wish or leave the fields blank if you don't. Its not a good idea to advertise your email address online unless you like wading through an inbox full of spam every week. I made up a bogus email address for this exercise. Tick or un-tick the yahoo messenger box as appropriate (I un-ticked it). Click "next" when you're done.

Your Details

The next window lets you name the page you are about to create. Type in your page name, remembering that you cannot have a blank space or weird characters between words. Click "next" to see the confirmation dialog.

Give Your Page a Filename

Congratulations !! You just made a webpage !!

Write down the web address of the page you just made and share it with your friends, mine was http://www.geocities.com/richo68/ about_me.html

Congratulations !!

You should now find yourself back on the pagewizards page and from here you can both view your webpage and play with it. You can tweak all sorts of stuff from here and I encourage you explore the tools and have a play around with them.

Would you like to build a little more and learn some very basic HTML code (its really easy) ?

Stay tuned for part 2