Making Your Own Webpage - Part 1

by Bob Seidel

By request, here is the start of a series of columns on making your own web page. Now, we are going to have to do this "the Bob way". I remember my teenage daughters always complaining that I didn't help them with their homework. They said "Daddy, don't explain it to us, just give us the answer!" Well, I didn't then, and I ain't gonna now. Here we go…

(Before we begin, the focus of these columns is on personal web pages. If you want a business web page (one that takes orders or displays inventory, etc.) you will need professional help. Period. The skills needed to do these things are far beyond the common person. You could, of course, find someone selling a prepackaged system, but you are still not writing it yourself in that case. An amateur effort will not represent your business well.)

What is a webpage? From a user standpoint, it's just a destination on the World Wide Web. You enter the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) - i.e. a World Wide Web address - and your browser displays the page. Easy, right! Well, writing them is a whole different story.

A webpage is actually a collection of computer files. The questions you need to know the answers to about these files are:

- What is the content of those files?

- Where do I put the files?

- How do I get the files there?

- How does a reader of my webpage know where to get the files?

When you can answer these questions, you will have the basic knowledge needed to create a webpage.

The answer to the second and fourth questions is that you need some "space" on the Internet. The space is where you are going to put your files. You usually get space through one of two methods: Your ISP (Internet Service Provider) may provide some space for your use - check with them. The other option is to purchase it - yes, it is for sale. Where this space is located determines how your users will get to it.

You first need to determine whether your want your own "domain" or not. A domain is simply the name of a space or place on the Internet. Bobseidel.com or southport.net or microsoft.com are examples of domain names. When you register a domain name, you are telling the Internet that it should send requests for that domain name to a particular computer (server) on the Internet (where your files are going to be).

Registration of a domain name is usually about $35 per year. You can find out if a particular domain name is available at many places on the 'net, such as www.names4ever.com. At that website, you can search to see if the domain name you want is available. Note that the suffix (.com, etc.) is part of the domain name. Thus, bobseidel.com and bobseidel.net are two different and distinct domain names. If you wanted them both, you would have to register and pay the fee twice. The "www" prefix is not part of the domain name.

If you are willing to settle for a more generic domain name, you do not have to register. For example, if you use the webpage space that your ISP provides, your webpage URL might be www.yahoo.com/users/bobseidel. The domain in this case is yahoo.com - you are just renting some space under their domain name. If you register your own name, then you get what you register - i.e. www.yourname.com.

There are a number of services available on the 'net that will sell you space and domain names. The particular one I use is aplus.net; their Solo II plan costs $9.95/month for lots of storage (more than you would ever need) and if you pay up front for a year, they throw in the domain registration fee. I understand that Yahoo also sells domain names and space, and there are many others. By the way, some of these services also give you e-mail, but this is not always true - if it is important for you to get e-mail as me@mydomain.com then you need to make sure your service provider does this.

How much space you will need depends on how extensive your webpage will be and how much image or graphic content you have. 5-10 megabytes of space should do for a basic webpage.

So, now you know how to get some web space and next time I will cover what is in the files and how to get them there.

(Bob Seidel is a local computer consultant in the Southport / Oak Island area. You can visit his website at www.bobseidel.com or e-mail him at bsc@bobseidel.com).