When you want to create your own your own website there are several steps to take. You need to know what you want on it, and to find the images and backgrounds. (Later on you will acquire a graphics program or two and make your own images!)

 

The Background Texture Archive is a very good source of backgrounds.

 

Gifpile has lots and lots of images for you.

 

Image Paradise is another great source of images.

You will need either to learn how to write html, the language needed to place anything on the internet, or use an html editor or use a host which has an online facility.

Ann's World has an absolutely wonderful list of links to helpful sites. You can learn html online.

Arachnophilia is an excellent html editor which you can download free.

You have to choose your hosting site, and upload your work:

Geocities is where I made my first site, and I still think it is one of the best. Free hosts usually have advertising banners on your pages, and Geocities have one of the least obtrusive I know. They also have tools to help beginners make their pages, and they provide add-ons like guestbooks. If you would like to explore other options  About.com has an excellent list of home page hosts, with details of their features.

More Excellent Resources

Bravenet Web Services - have a large selection of free services and add-ons for webmasters, and are well worth a look.

FlamingText.com - this online logo generator allows you to quickly and easily generate text, images, banners and buttons for your web page.

GIFBot - GIFBot will optimize your web graphics for faster download. Shrink your GIF and JPEG images for a faster loading Web page. No long download times. Free!

GifTools.com - compress Compress GIF or JPEG images, convert Tiff or BMP files to JPEG.

Then you need to make sure people come and visit your site.

Web site submission

META TAG analyzer - free on-line analysis of title tag and meta tags (description, keywords). Optimize your META TAGS and put your site on the top of the search engines.

Submit Express - submit your website to 40 search engines for free!

Good Web Design

There are many many horror sites on the internet! But there are some really well-designed sites. One example is the Big Blue site I mentioned in The Arts section. Here is another - Web Architect - have a look at her portfolio (click on the miniatures to go to each web site) and you will see what really good design is.