bummer for us!

So your budget is tight and you can't afford to spend the big bucks, either that or you are too cheap. Cool but guess what? If you plan on creating your own sight while it may end up being a fun adventure, one you may never come back from...you will at least spend the same amount as you would if you just wrote us a check for a modest amount. Not to mention your valuable time which could be put to better use.

If you are thinking to yourself something like "hey, no big deal", well then congratulations you are ready to go. The majority of people may be in a quandary as to what all this stuff means and what it is. Of course if you work for a web design company you could be laughing right now. Below is a brief explanation and some suggestions if you have masochistic tendencies and are still resolved to go it alone.

A domain name is just a textual representation of the address where your website resides. It is what a person types in the address bar of their internet browser to get to your web site. The true address is really numerical but you probably won't need to worry about that. So you need to find a company that will check to see whether the name you would like is available and if so you may register the name so that you own it for so long as you are willing to pay for it. We are guessing but the average cost for registering a domain name for a year is approximately $15 bucks.

Lucky for you most Internet Service Providers who offer hosting services are also able to help you register your domain so you can kill two birds with one stone. A host has servers, basically huge computers with massive hard drives that store your web site and provide a portal to the internet. So now once your page is on the host's servers people type in the address of your site which goes to your host's servers and finds the place on the server where your site resides magically bringing it back through the internet and onto their monitor. There are many ISP's who host web sites and the costs range depending upon the service you want or need. There are many different ways to package a hosting plan, most charge you monthly but some will offer you a yearly plan. There are different server types, some faster and more reliable, some that allow you more functions than others. Of course the more options you would like to have included in your plan the host will probably charge you. For your run of the mill web site, again we are guessing, plan on spending an average of $15 bucks a month.

When you create a web site of course you are going to be concerned with how the web site is formatted, how it looks and feels. You will also want to position stuff on your site so that you get the look you want. Back in the day this could be done with pure HTML and HTML tables. If you know anything about tables you have rows, columns, and ultimately cells where you can place content. Well this got real complicated and made web sites kind of heavy using many different tags. Just when we got it all down along came CSS which revolutionized the creation of cool web sites. CSS is a document with it's own language or code that deals with the format of the elements on your web pages along with the positioning of those elements. The CSS file attaches or links to your web pages to tell the pages how they should behave and look. Needless to say this has became much more efficient and time effective because you can easily reformat your site by editing one document as opposed to reformatting each HTML page on your site.

Many HTML software programs now come with a CSS editor integrated, lucky for you. We use a stand along CSS editor called Style Master which costs a measly $59.99 which you can purchase on line from creator Western Civilization. There are many other CSS editors but we have tried many of them and found Style Master to be the most user friendly. Your last option is to learn the CSS Language cold and create your own CSS using a text editor like word pad. For some great examples of what CSS can do check out the CSS Zen Garden. These guys are our idols.

You know over the years it has been difficult to keep up with all the changes to the standards of web site creation. Every so often the web site powers that be get together and decide to make changes to the standard. HTML is constantly evolving to the point where we are now talking about Extensible HyperText Markup Language (XHTML)? Don't worry we quite don't understand it all either. What you need to understand is that the language of web site creation is living and ever changing becoming stricter and more sophisticated.

Lucky for the web site challenged there are some incredible What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) web page editors that will do most of what you want for you. These software programs range from the extremely powerful to the most basic. Of course you have to take the time to learn how the software functions and it would also be in your best interest to have a basic understanding of XHTML. There are tons of resources and tutorials on the web to teach you the language but there is lots to learn. If you learn the language you may not need an editor as once again you can use word pad to create your XHTML.

We began our web site creation exploits many years ago with a program called HotDog by Sausage Software which now costs about $99.95. Our preference, however, is Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 recently purchased by Adobe. You can purchase your very own copy for a measly $399. You may have a preference for another editor but in our opinion Dreamweaver gives you the most bang for the buck and is fairly user friendly.

Once you create your web pages you will have to have a way for you to send your files to the server where your website resides. This is done through File Transfer Protocol and most web editors including Dreamweaver have an FTP function integrated. Using the address for your domain you create a username and password which allows you to connect to the host computer (server). There are also stand alone FTP programs which might be more powerful if that is your preference. If you go to Tucows and type in FTP in the search function they will list many programs for you that will do the trick...some are even free.

If you want your site to look cool not only will you have to create a nice style sheet but you will need some nice graphics to place on your website. The two most common formats for graphics are jpg and gif files which allow you to give your graphics transparent backgrounds thus creating some cool effects as they blend together. These graphics can only be created and or manipulated with a good software program of which there are many to choose. Different programs perform different functions of course but many are redundant. We use a variety of software programs mostly including the powerful Adobe Illustrator ($499) and streamlined Xara Xtreme ($79) which gives you incredible value and ease of use. Working with graphics can be one of the most challenging parts of web site creation and can often be a site's downfall.

Other things you might want to include in your site are animations, created in gif format or swf format with Macromedia Flash 8 ($699) now the property of Adobe. There are various Flash editing software programs which allow you to inexpensively create Flash content for your site. We use SWiSH Max ($99.95) among other programs.

The additions to a web site are numerous depending upon the purpose of the site and what you need it to do. There are applications, documents, data bases, forms, sound files, navigation systems, shopping carts, javascripts, etc...sorry but we can't list them all. Software programs probably exist to easily get most of these done. The easiest resource for these programs is Tucows. It is really a product of your own imagination and knowledge of the possibilities. If you are willing to pay or learn on your own there is little you can't create on your site.

Now that you have a general idea what you will need no matter how fancy your concept for your web site is the most vital part of your site will be the content, thus the sarcasm about minor details. What kind of information are you going to provide for visitors. It has to be, unlike this site, somewhat interesting and well presented (more useless sarcasm).

All the bells and whistles in the world cannot take the place of quality content and that includes quality graphics. We apologize for the simplistic approach but the intent of this site is not to give you a comprehensive set of instructions to allow you to do it yourself. We want you to understand that there is a lot to it that you may never have realized. If you are brave and really want to go to the trouble we think it only fair that you suffer with your mistakes as we have in order to learn to create a web site for yourself. If so have fun!

Now come to your senses, take the plunge and check out the services that we offer and what we charge.