Create your own website

Before you decide to create your own website, you should evaluate your own skill level. If you have made websites before and have experience with XHTML and CSS, you can skip to the next step. If you do not, you should start learning or consider one of the alternatives.

The second step is to decide if you want a dynamic or static site. If you choose dynamic, you should then choose a content management system (cms). Some web hosting providers will install a cms for you. Make sure you check with them. Finally, you will need to setup some type of management policy for updating the site regularly. Gone are the days of sites that can just sit there unchanged and receive thousands of visitors.

If you have no experience in web design, cannot afford to hire someone, and have no intention of learning, you still might be able to get by if your host will install your cms for you. Then, you can download a free template or purchase one. If you do not like that option, consider a site creation tool or software.

5 Ways to Speed Up Your Website

Question: My website is a little too slow. Do I need to find a new web host?

Answer:

1. Your web host – These is the easy one to assume, that your web hosting company is just offering slow service. But it might not be true. Test it. There are websites that will allow you to do independent traceroutes and other tests to evaluate your host’s network speed. You can also check general things like the CPU speed, RAM, and server load.

2. Check your own connection – You also should not assume that the problem lies elsewhere. Unless you have visited your site from another location, you may very well just have a slow connection on your end, even if you can connect to other sites just fine. Do a traceroute and see if there are any trouble spots between your computer and your server.

3. Optimize images – Image files with huge file sizes will take longer to load. Use an image editing program to make sure all of your images are small enough in size while still maintaining quality.
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HTML, XHTML, and CSS

When stepping into the world of web hosting, you will be inundated with abbreviations, acronyms, and recursive acronyms. Three that you should definitely know are: HTML, XHTML, and CSS. HTML is as old as the Web itself. It stands for Hyper Text Markup Language. It is the primary language of the Web. All websites use at least some of it, and a web browser’s primary function is to read it. Web servers, such as Apache HTTP Server, are designed to primarily to publish HTML-based websites.

XHTML is the extended form of HTML that was officially recommended in 2000 to clean up some of the issues with HTML 4, while also preparing for HTML 5. It has gradually become the standard for websites, and web purists insist on it. In XHTML, the structure of the site is handled in the markup, while the style is handled by CSS.

CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets, and is a language in itself that handles all of the style (colors, sizes, text weight, borders) of the elements on a web page. All modern web browsers support CSS, and it is very useful for sites with multiple pages, as you can quickly and easily apply new styles to multiple pages without having to edit each page individually. All three languages have standards established and maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

Photo: Flickr