Creating a website is not a big deal. You don't need a fancy computer, high-speed internet, or expensive software to create a superlative site. Having these things can make some of your work faster and easier, and can add flash to a site, but the heart and soul of any website is not what's flashy. The heart and soul is what's useful to your users, what is beautiful and easy to navigate; in short, a fusion of function, purpose and beauty.

That said, you can create a website using any computer that supports Netscape 6.x or IE 6.x.

You need three basic programs to do the site, and you probably already own two of them. You need a browser, and a text editor--Word for Windows, WordPad, NotePad or the like.

The third program you may need is an FTP program. Most hosts have a "user interface" (basically a web page where you can send your pages up to the server). Using the interface is faster and easier up front, since you don't need a separate FTP program to get your files up to the server.

In the slightly longer run, you will want a standalone FTP program. You can download a free demo version of this to get started. The full price of an FTP program is around $30...so that can be considered the most you might need to spend.

Before you start, it's well to get a quick overview of what you'll actually be doing.

HTML is a computer language, but not in the conventional sense of the term. Most computer languages "do" something--computations, games, data processing--but HTML, most of the time, does nothing but format how the HTML pages look.

HTML is written in the form of tags. A tag is just a small piece of code, sometimes one word, sometimes a few words, enclosed in angle brackets: < >. All HTML is written in this form.

An HTML page is a plain-text file with the tags typed on it.

You create your HTML pages inside the text editor, and save them with the extension .html. That's why you can use NotePad...all you need is a text editor that can produce plain-text, unformatted files.

You view your HTML pages inside the browser. You don't need to be connected to the Internet to do that. Just open the browser and open your page inside it.

You send the finished HTML pages to your server using either the host's user interface or the standalone FTP program. The server is just a big computer that your hosting service, or host, runs. Your host can be Geocities, it can be your Internet Service Provider (most of them offer a free webspace along with your Internet service), or any other host.

You send the finished pages up through the same Internet connection you use when you surf the Net. Once the pages are on the host's server, everyone on the World Wide Web can see your site.

That's basically it, now let's get started.

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Open your text editor and get a new document in there.

Copy and paste the following into the new document (everything between the horizontal lines):

Ummm...that's it. Save the file as index.html. Make sure it is saved as a plain text, unformatted, ASCII file (or whatever your text editor decides to call it). Double check to make sure the text editor didn't tack on the .txt extension and make the file index.html.txt, that doesn't work. Change it to index.html if you need to.

Why index.html? That's the name of the file you get if you go to, say:

http://www.thebroadroom.net

You actually open up a file called:

http://www.thebroadroom.net/index.html

If you typed http://www.thebroadroom.net/index.html instead of http://www.thebroadroom.net, you would get exactly the same file.

That's enough for today. Haw haw...just kidding. Of course you want to do more than that. Let's view the page.

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Open up a browser...any browser. You don't need to connect to the Internet; just open the browser. Look in the browser menu for something like "Open Page in Browser" or "Open File in Browser" or something like that...each browser is slightly different but they all have this feature.

Choose "browse" and select the page you just made, index.html, from the files inside the box that opens. Click "OK" until the page you made opens up and you can see it inside the browser:

You may be dying of excitement, but that is how it's supposed to look. Don't worry about that now.

Note a few things...the text you typed between the "title" tags now appears on the title bar of the browser window. It also appears on the Windows taskbar. It also appears if you bookmark the page. So do put a title on every page you do; it's handy.

Everything inside the "body" tags now appears inside the window.

And all of the tags are nested. That's the general format of all HTML. All HTML is composed of tags, usually in open/close, nested pairs. The words inside the tags are not case-sensitive; you may use uppercase or lowercase for them. It's easiest if you stick with one or the other though.

Lastly, you'll need to send the page to the host's server so that the whole wide World Wide Web can see it, not just you.

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What are uploading and downloading? Uploading is when you send files from your computer up to the server. Downloading is when you get files from the server down to your computer.

Technically these are copies of files...if you upload your index.html file to your host's server, you'll still have the original on your computer, and vice versa.

Now you are ready to upload index.html.

Where are you going to send it to? You need a host. There are free hosts, like geocities.com, and paid hosts. Since you're just starting out, go with a free one...try Geocities or else your Internet Service Provider (most of them give you a webspace along with your Internet service).

All hosts have either a user interface (basically a web page that lets you upload your files, or upload and download them) or else they give you an FTP account. Some hosts offer both.

Let's say you want to use the user interface. Even if you normally use a standalone FTP program to do your site, if your host has a user interface, you should learn how to use it anyway.

So get connected to the Net. If you're using Geocities, go to www.geocities.com and sign up for the free website (they still offer it, it's just slightly harder to find). Once you get your username and password set up, you can sign in.

If you're going with your ISP, call them and tell them you'd like to use your free personal webspace. (Many companies don't reserve the space until you ask for it.) Then ask for the Web address to the user interface...the place where you can upload your files. They'll know what you're asking. If there's no interface (and there will almost always be one), you'll have to use the standalone FTP program (details in the next section).

Once you've got the host set up, and the web address of the interface (for Geocities it's www.geocities.com, the same place you registered), go there and log in.

Once you're logged in, look for a link that says something like "Upload Files." It'll be in a conspicuous place.

When you get there, you typically get a page with boxes in it. Each box has a "browse" button next to it. Hit "browse"...and select your file, index.html, from your hard drive.

Then hit "Upload" or "Upload Files" or whatever it's called...there's always something like that at the bottom of the page.

You should get a message saying whether your file uploaded successfully. Send it again if it didn't.

Once it's up, you have a website! Anyone typing the URL of your website will get your first HTML page.

Don't feel stupid if you don't know the URL of your brand-new website. The host should put the URL on the interface. If it's really not there, call the host and ask them what the URL is!

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What is FTP? It stands for File Transfer Protocol. It's a protocol...a way of sending files over the Internet.

Http is also a protocol. I think it stands for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol but, I'm not sure (too lazy to go look it up). Anyhow it's the protocol you use to view web pages on the Net. Technically the pages are downloaded from their server to your computer, so you can see them.

Some HTML editors have a built-in FTP program. Something like www.blogger.com does too...it's how you publish your blog. Then there is the built-in FTP that the user interface (section above) uses. But for any serious Web development, you will want to own a standalone FTP program.

Here's the best freeware one:

Ipswitch FTP

Instructions for downloading and installing it are on the site.

Coffee Cup also makes FTP software:

Download CoffeeCup Direct FTP - Click Here

This is a paid program. However they do offer lifetime upgrades if you buy it.

Once you have your FTP program installed, open it...you should see a window with two panes. The left-hand pane will contain a list of the files on your computer. It looks like Windows Explorer. The right-hand pane will be empty.

You now need to set up your server. Look on the menu inside the FTP program. In my Coffee Cup, the command is Servers/Add Server. The Ipswitch one is similar; there's always an option in there to add a server.

You'll get a pop-up window with boxes in it to fill out.

99% of the time, all you need to connect to the server are three pieces of information:

1. the FTP address for your account
2. your FTP username
3. your FTP password

How you get this information will depend on your host. If you're going with a paid service, the host typically sends you an email when you sign up, that contains those three items.

Other times, it's faster to just call the host. Earthlink, for instance, gives you a free web space when you use them as your Internet Service Provider. I didn't care to sift through their site, so I called the Earthlink "800" number and just asked what the FTP address, username and password were, and the fella at the other end told me.

Sometimes you will need extra information, but this is usually enough to get you up and running.

OK...now you have set up a server. Now you can FTP your index.html page up to the server.

Connect to the Internet in your usual way. Once you're connected, go back to the FTP program window. Choose the server you just set up from the list of servers under Servers (again not sure what Ipswitch calls it, but there's always a list of servers in there).

You'll know if you're in, because the right-hand pane will display whatever is currently on your server.

Sometimes all you'll see are two folder icons, one with one dot next to it, one with two dots next to it. That means there's nothing on your server.

Some hosts put their own index.html or index.htm page there, so you'll see that along with the folder icons.

There's no real difference between .html and .htm BTW. .htm is the Microsoft version of .html, because in the DOS system, filename extensions had to be 3 characters or less.

If there's an index.htm file on the server, feel free to delete it. If there's an index.html file on the server, don't bother, because it will be overwritten by your file.

There are two modes to send a file: ASCII and binary. FTP programs usually have an "auto" mode and that's what you use most of the time. Sometimes you'll need to set it manually. ASCII is for text files like your HTML file. Binary is for graphics and other non-text files.

Once you've set your transfer mode, select the file you want to upload and double-click it. You'll get a small box asking you if you're sure you want to upload the file. There's a reason for that...if you upload something with the same filename as a file on the server, the new file overwrites the old one. Sometimes that really hurts.

So...now...find your index.html file from the list in the left-hand pane. Double-click it and hit "OK." You should see a bunch of lines of text scrolling madly on the bottom of the program (or wherever the log appears...I think it was somewhere else in Ipswitch).

When all the furor dies down, you can examine the last lines of text in the log...should say something like, "Transfer successful."

The default setting in Coffee Cup is to refresh the server pane every time you send something up. So you should also see the pane refresh itself and your index.html file appear there.

Now the test...open your browser. Go to your web address. You should see your file there now.

If you do, congratulate yourself. You have just completed everything you need to know to create and deploy a website.

If not, haw haw! You're still in debug mode. Welcome to the wonderful world of programming!

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