08.03.2016 #2. What do you need to create and share your own web page?
#Web Development
1 step. I recommend you to learn something about HTML5 and CSS. It isn't hard, these languages are very simple, and when you know them you can communicate with your future blog without any translators and mediators. Just you and your beloved page :)
Books can be boring, classes can be expensive. So I advise you to use MOOC (A massive open online course), most of them are free. There are hundreds and hundreds of courses about web design and web-development, I didn't try even tenth part of them but I tried about 5-6 free courses and I can strongly suggest you these courses of University of Michigan: Introduction to HTML5 and Introduction to CSS3. These courses are held by the marvelous smart lady - Lecturer of the School of Information of the University of Michigan - Colleen van Lent. She can teach everyone and these courses are for the dummies, you can start without any experience.
Some tips:
Try everything that shows Colleen on the lessons. It's important.
Don't think about rationality, beauty, and design on your first try page, just code without artistic critique.
For writing code, I use a very simple and free editor: Sublime Text 2. But now the newest, Sublime Text 3 version is realized, so you can download it.
Use this tutorial when you forget something or try to create something new: W3Schools.
Trust me, a few weeks and you will be able to do some good pages.
2 step. You need a place and name to your web page. The most providers who give you the internet also offer domain name and the place to your web page. You can choose this service but your page will have pegging to your location and your provider name.
If you want to have the free name to your web page you can also use TK service. Here you can register web name - your_name.tk. When you use a free domain name service you should be ready that the most names are already occupied.
If you're able to pay about 10$ per year you can register your name in common internet areas (they are called top-level domain names) like .com, .net, .org etc. But I advise you to read about access and meaning these domain names. You find some information here: List of Internet Top Level Domains.
After you decide how your web page name might look, you should check its availability. This web page WhoIs gives you access to the whole registered domain name database. Once you find an available name you can purchase it for one year, 5-years or more. WhoIs will give you the list of domain name sellers. I bought my web page name on NameBright and payed 8.22$ pro year, it's very simple procedure, the same as another shopping on the internet.
So you have a name then you will need a place. The place for the web page can be also free or paid. I want to use my page only for my needs, it isn't required much space and specific features, that's why I decided to take a free hosting place for my page. You can find a huge quantity of hosting offers on the internet, but the first you should look to the advertising. Pop-up messages and advertising on the page can be terribly annoying. For my page, I'm using 000webhost. I have 1500 MB disk space for my web, FTP-connecting and 5 email address (but I still cannot fix them, so I will use my old Gmail), it's enough for me and I can switch to the paid version when I want it.
Some tips:
Use external FTP programs for uploading your web, it's a hundred times easier than direct upload. You need a few time to get used to it and after you cannot imagine another way. I use Total Commander, only because I use this file manager for a long long time. You can find a more comfortable program for FTP upload.
One very important thing, I didn't know it before and it made me nervous. When you took your domain name from one company and you're hosting your web pace to another company, you must make some friendship between them. In this way. On your hosting page (in my case it called CPanel) you should find you Account details->Nameserver details. You should copy your hosting server name and put them to your domain account. For this in your domain company page you should find something like Overview ->Manage and organize your domain. And here you should edit Nameservers to the ones you've copied from hosting account page. Yes! Your domain company will know about your hosting company, you created the relationship between them.
And the last one. It's very hard to choose nice colors for the text and backgrounds. It can be easier when you use a color palette. I prefer one blog - Love-palette on Tumblr, there you can find nice palette from photos.
And now you are ready! You have knowledge, name and place - light up your idea and start creating ;)
If this article helps you, you want to correct it or you want to ask me anything, please write me an email!