Create your own website

Build a great personal or business website... absolutely no experience needed!

 

Why pay a professional web developer? If you can use a word processor, you can do it yourself! This package contains all the software, templates, and simple step-by-step instructions you need to build a great site in practically no time!

 

Build sites like these using our professional-quality templates:

-Family sites

-Hobby sites

-Community and nonprofit sites

-Online storefronts that accept credit card payments via PayPal

-Post video on YouTube

 

8 Easy Projects

In this book you'll see just how easy it is to create your own website. The CD included with this book contains professional website templates and a free web page editor. With the web page editor, you can quickly and easily customize the templates into your personal websites. Better still, using the editor is as simple as using a word processor.

 

Use easy web-based services to:

-Sell products at your own eBay Store

-Create your own personal or professional blog

-Display your digital photos on your own Snapfish site

-Share your videos on YouTube

-Create a MySpace page that'll stand out from the crowd

-Build your social network with your own Facebook presence

 

You won't believe how easy it is to build your own site...or how much fun!

 

CD-ROM contains all the tools you need:

The complete open source SeaMonkey Suite software toolset for building websites (no restrictions, not a demo!) HTML sample templates

• Welcome to Create Your Own Website! p. 1
• 1 Creating Your First Web Page p. 5
• The Components of a Website p. 7
• Serving Web Pages with a Web Server p. 8
• Understanding Website Domain Names p. 8
• Web Pages, the Building Blocks of a Website p. 9
• Knowing Your Options p. 13
• Building Web Pages Using Web Page Authoring Software Tools p. 14
• Installing SeaMonkey p. 15
• Starting SeaMonkey's Composer p. 17
• Creating a Web Page with SeaMonkey Composer p. 19
• Changing the Font p. 20
• Making Text Bold, Italic, and Underlined p. 22
• Changing the Colors p. 23
• Positioning Text p. 25
• Saving the Web Page p. 25
• Summary p. 27
• 2 Creating a Website p. 29
• Finding a Web Host Provider p. 30
• Important Web Hosting Metrics p. 31
• Picking a Web Hosting Company p. 33
• Registering a Domain Name p. 34
• Choosing and Buying a Domain Name p. 34
• Configuring the Domain Name p. 36
• Uploading Web Pages from Composer to Your Website p. 37
• Building a Website from a Template p. 41
• Summary p. 42
• 3 Creating a Family/Personal Website p. 45
• Examining the Family/Personal Template p. 46
• Customizing the Template p. 47
• Changing the Upper-Left Image p. 48
• Specifying Image Properties p. 49
• Removing the Image Altogether p. 53
• Changing the Font p. 53
• Adding and Removing Pages from the Template p. 55
• Customizing the Family Pictures Page p. 56
• Adding New Images p. 57
• Publishing Your Family/Personal Website p. 59
• Placing Linked Files in the Same Folder p. 61
• Testing the Website p. 61
• Summary p. 62
• 4 Creating an Online Storefront p. 63
• Examining the eCommerce Website Template p. 65
• Customizing the Home Page p. 66
• Configuring the Add to Cart Buttons p. 67
• Creating a PayPal Premier Account p. 67
• Getting the Add to Cart Button HTML p. 72
• Adding the Add to Cart Button into the Template p. 78
• Viewing the Shopping Cart p. 79
• Tying It All Together-A True Online Shopping Experience p. 80
• Summary p. 83
• 5 Selling Products with an eBay Store p. 85
• Simplify the Sales Process with eBay Stores p. 87
• Creating and Customizing Your eBay Store p. 88
• Managing Your Store p. 90
• Adding Products to Your eBay Store p. 93
• Collecting Payments and Order Fulfillment p. 96
• Taking Advantage of Marketing Tools p. 97
• Sales and Traffic Reports p. 99
• Inspecting Your Site's Traffic p. 100
• Tracking Sales p. 101
• Summary p. 102
• 6 Creating a Blog with Blogger p. 103
• What Do You Blog About? p. 105
• Creating a Blog p. 105
• Adding Content to Your Blog p. 109
• Customizing Your Blog p. 115
• Examining the Basic Tab p. 116
• Altering the Blog's Appearance Through the Formatting Tab p. 117
• Managing Comment Settings p. 118
• Archiving Old Content p. 120
• Working with Postings via Email p. 121
• Customizing the Blog's Template p. 122
• Summary p. 126
• 7 Sharing Images Online with Snapfish p. 127
• Choosing an Online Image Sharing Service p. 128
• Creating an Account on SnapFish p. 129
• Uploading and Managing Your Digital Pictures p. 131
• Adding Pictures to Your Account p. 132
• Editing and Deleting Your Pictures and Albums p. 135
• Sharing Your Pictures and Albums with Friends and Family p. 138
• Ordering Prints and Gifts p. 142
• Summary p. 144
• 8 Hanging Out and Making Friends at MySpace p. 147
• Joining MySpace p. 149
• Expanding Your Profile p. 153
• Customizing Your Profile Page's Layout and Colors p. 155
• Configuring Your Name Information p. 156
• Creating a Blog and Sharing Your Pictures p. 158
• Uploading and Sharing Your Photos p. 158
• Expressing Yourself with Your Blog p. 160
• Growing Your Social Network p. 163
• Making New Friends p. 164
• Summary p. 166
• 9 Posting Your Videos on YouTube p. 167
• Getting Started with YouTube p. 168
• Creating an Account p. 169
• Uploading Your Videos p. 171
• Viewing and Managing Your Videos p. 175
• Customizing Your Channel p. 176
• Customizing Your Channel Info p. 177
• Changing Your Channel's Colors and Layout p. 178
• Organizing Your Videos p. 179
• Sharing Personal and Location Information p. 180
• Embedding YouTube Videos into Your Website p. 181
• Embedding a Video in a Blog p. 182
• Summary p. 185
• 10 Staying Connected with Facebook p. 187
• Building a Social Network on Facebook p. 188
• Finding Friends on Facebook p. 189
• An Overview of Your Facebook Home Page p. 194
• Viewing and Editing Your Profile p. 196
• Configuring Your Privacy Settings p. 198
• Receiving Notifications p. 201
• Using Facebook's Applications p. 202
• Summary p. 205
• 11 Bonus Material p. 207
• HTML-The Language of Web Pages p. 208
• Understanding How the Internet Works p. 212
• Examining How the Postal Service Works p. 212
• The Internet as a Virtual Postal Service p. 213
• Optimizing Your Digital Pictures p. 218
• Resizing Digital Images p. 219
• Summary p. 222
• Index p. 223

Introduction Welcome to Create Your Own Website! As the popularity of the Internet and the World Wide Web have risen since the beginnings in the early 1990s, virtually all businesses have established an online presence. Many individuals, too, have left their imprints on the web, creating a website for their family or posting pictures of their vacations. If you want to join the millions of people who have created websites but fear you lack the background or expertise for such an endeavor, this book is for you! In this book you see just how easy creating a website can be. The CD included with this book contains professional website templates and a free web page editor. With the web page editor, you can quickly and easily customize the provided templates into your very own personal websites. Using the web page editor is as simple as using a word processor program. It's just point and click! Since there are a number of different types of websites on the Internet, this book's CD includes templates for different types of sites. Specifically, the provided templates let you quickly create the following types of sites: Family websites --With a family website, you can share pictures of you and your family with friends and members of your extended family. Hobby websites --A hobby website allows you to share your hobbies with others who have similar interests. Community websites --With a community website, your church, club, bowling team, or other group or association can post information, schedules, pictures, and other pertinent information. Online storefront website --Sell products online by accepting credit card payments with an online storefront site. In addition to showing you how to build your own websites from the ground up, this book includes chapters on how to use existing web-based services to quickly create common websites. Specifically, you'll see how to Sell products at eBay Stores --eBay Stores are a quick and easy way to start selling products online. With eBay Stores, your products are listed on eBay.com, and payment processing is handled for you by eBay. You simply list your products for sale and ship them when purchased! Publish content online with a blog --A blog is a type of website designed to allow users to quickly and easily publish content online. Blogs are springing up all over the World Wide Web, used by both individuals and businesses alike. Share your digital pictures --You've just gotten back from your vacation to Tahiti with gobs of digital pictures. How do you easily share these beautiful pictures with your friends and family? Digital picture sharing websites make it easy to upload your pictures and share them with select friends and family. Create a home page on MySpace --MySpace is one of many "social networking" websites, where visitors can stay in touch with friends, meet their friends' friends, and make new social contacts. In addition to maintaining and growing your network of friends, MySpace makes it easy for you to create your own web pages, post pictures, share music, and host a blog. Share your videos on YouTube --With today's video cameras, it's easy to upload your home videos to your computer, where you can watch or edit them. Once a video is stored on your computer, you can upload it to YouTube and share it with a world-wide audience. Build your social network with Facebook --Facebook is another popular "social networking" website, like MySpace. Unlike MySpace, Facebook allows users to join one or more networks which are organized by facets like geographic region, employer, and school. It's a great site for catching up with old friends from high school or college, as well as an excellent resource for making new friends at your company or in your neighborhood. Whether you want to build your own, unique website or use a pre-existing web application, you learn everything you need to know to start building your own website today with this book. Get ready to see just how fun and easy it is to create your own website! (c) Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved. Excerpted from Create Your Own Website by Scott Mitchell All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.