If there’s one thing you learn by working on a lot of different Web sites, it’s that almost any design idea–no matter how appallingly bad–can be made usable in the right circumstances, with enough effort.
-Steve Krug

Creating a website

Websites are written in Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML-code). Just as Microsoft Word has its own code, doc-code (example.doc), websites have their, HTML-code (example.html). Other most used codes for developing a website are Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP), Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and JavaScript. PHP is for creating dynamic webpages. PHP can be used for sending email, building a log-in system or uploading files. CSS is a style language and covers items like fonts, colors, and background images of a webpage. JavaScript is for adding interactivity to a webpage (for example, making calculations) and for creating form applications. To have an idea how everything looks in HTML-code, you can right click on your mouse and choose "View Source". There are a lot of websites where you can learn how to work with HTML, CSS, PHP and JavaScript for free.

⇒ Tutorial ⇐

When creating a website you have three options. The first option is to pay an online marketing agencies to design your website. This company will also maintain the website for you. The price depends mostly on the size and applications of your website, but all things considered, it will be in the four figures.

⇒  Online marketing agencies  ⇐

The second and third options imply that you will build your own website. The easiest way is by using a What You See Is What You Get editor (WYSIWYG). Imagine a Microsoft PowerPoint slide where you can put sentences and images wherever you want on the slide. This is what you can do in a WYSIWYG-editor. The editor will translate your page into an HTML webpage. To do this you don’t need to know how to write HTML-codes.

⇒  Free WYSIWYG-editors  ⇐
⇒  Paid WYSIWYG-editors  ⇐

The third option should be obvious: creating your website from scratch using HTML- and CSS-codes. To do this you will need an HTML-editor. They are customer friendly.

⇒  Free HTML-editors  ⇐
⇒  Paid HTML-editors  ⇐

If you want to establish a hair salon you will need to know a little bit about human hair. The same goes here. You don’t need to be able to build your own website, but it is good to have little bit of background knowledge about the above-mentioned codes. It will only take a few hours to go through the tutorials.

If you can afford it, you can pay an online marketing agency; this will save you a lot of time. If you are considering creating your own website, I recommend a free WYSIWYG- or HTML-editor. The paid versions of the editors have some extra features, but they are not of any added value for beginners. There is a better deal for you: an all-in-one website. This term will be explained on the next page.





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