Creating Personal Web Sites

This is a two-part article about creating a web site on the web and the tools that you need to do that.

During the last decade we have truly entered the information age. More and more people are becoming a part of the ever growing and wondrous community called the Internet. It was just over a decade ago that 'Internet' was just another new concept that a lot of people were skeptical about. Today however, it would be difficult to imagine living in the world without this amazing phenomenon. It really has enabled humans to reach new heights.

Some basic terminology that you should take a look at before proceeding further:

Web Page: A document that contains information created with the help of HTML.

Web Site: A collection of web pages on a particular subject.

HTML: Also known as Hyper Text Markup Language, this is used for the creation of web pages. Information is written in between HTML tags ( ) to instruct the web page as to how information will be displayed. You can also put images into the web page by using this language. Some other languages like JavaScript, VB script, ASP, ASP.NET etc. are also used to display dynamic content on web pages and for performing user driver events.

There are basically two main categories of web sites:

Personal web site: These include websites that are about individual human beings/people.

Business web site: Includes web sites that advertise and inform users about the products and services that a company is selling.

This article will deal with creating personal web sites and putting them on the web.

You too can make your presence felt on the web (if you have not already done so) by creating a web site.

The demand and popularity of personal web sites have increased at a great rate since the start of the web. People have found web sites a great way to express themselves.

A personal web site is your message center where you can upload information about friends and family and share them with the rest of the world. They can even act as a personal Blog (on-line journal).

Having a personal web site on the Internet has a lot of advantages:

* Gives you the freedom of self-expression. You can tell the world about your favorite hobbies, special interests, post your resume etc. for the whole world to see.

* Ability to keep in touch share your life) with friend and family who are far away.

* Great opportunity for making new friends and forming online communities.

Now comes the question of actually creating a web site. Surprisingly it is not a difficult task at all. In fact there are a lot of web sites that will provide you with all the tools you need to create your own web site and put it on the web, and you do not even have to know HTML to make them! You do not even have to worry about buying up web space; almost all these sites will provide you with free hosting services. The only disadvantage is that they will probably put in banners (advertisements) of their sponsors on the site.

For example:
http://geocities.yahoo.com/
members.lycos.com

These are two of the most popular web sites where you can create your own web pages. Yahoo gives you multiple options for creating web pages. It has yahoo page wizard and yahoo page builder, which are two very powerful yet simple editors for creating pages and have a point and click interface.

http://www.webspawner.com/
http://maxpages.com/
www.expage.com/

These are some other sites where you can create your own web pages. You can also search on the Internet for more sites like these as well. All you need to do is register and then you can create your own web pages.

However, there is one little drawback when creating a site on these sites: you do not get your own personal domain name, so the address of your web site will be something like http://www.site_where_you_registered.com/yourname

Where 'yourname' is the name under which you registered.

However, taking everything into consideration, this is the simplest way to get on the web and start expressing yourself.

Ashish Jain
M6.Net Web Helpers
http://www.m6.net