Home> Articles
HOW TO BUILD A WEB SITE FOR BETWEEN $0- $50
 You've just
set out to build your very first web site, yet are intimidated by the site
maintenance costs and the huge amounts of software you must buy. Add these
items up and you could find yourself in the dogpound! Well, did you know
that you don't need to spend oodles of cash to build a website? If not,
then read this article to find out how!
IT CAN BE DONE!
We feel your pain-- all you want to do is just build your place on
the web, and for a reasonable price. And yet, here you are, faced with
the intimidating task of buying software or implementing plans that could
run in the hundreds and even thousands of dollars. Before your site's even
done, you may find yourself out of pocket a good thousand dollars. But
Webdesigner-Freebies
knows a secret. Not only can you build a website for less than $50, you
may even be able to build one completely free!
| First Things First- Hosting and Domain Registration |
|
The first bugaboo of web site building is finding a host and registering
a domain name. But what if you don't have the money-- at least right now?
Well, despite the Dot Com crashes of the late 90's, there are still quite
a few free web hosts around. No, you won't get the works with these
hosts, but at least you will be able to get a spot on the web. If you don't
like the fact that some of these sites place banner ads on your home page,
believe it or ot, there are quite a few free web hosts that offer free
bannerless hosting, one of them being Brinkster.com,
which gives its users 25MB of free space. None too shabby, we say!
But what about the problem of registering a domain? Well, you can't
get a free ".com" name at the time of this writing. However, you can get
a different type of domain name with any of a number of free "shorter URL"
services that allow you to turn a long domain name into a shorter, more
recognizable one. One of the more popular ones is Cjb.net.
Of course, as with any service, shorter URL services come with a catch,
mainly that they come with ads. But if your free web host sticks you with
an URL like http://www.webhostname.com/you/~page.html, what have
you got to lose?
| Second Things First: Web Building Software |
|
Going with a free web host and shorter URL service is all fine and dandy,
but you can't skimp on web building software, right? After all, to build
a snazzy site, you must buy Dreamweaver or some other high-end product,
right?
Wrong.
Did you know that there's a WYSIWYG/ HTML editor free for the taking
and using, no strings attached? It's Netscape Composer, one
of the most under-rated web building utilities out there. This program
not only builds clean code for you, it allows you to edit and even handcode
parts of your site-- and it comes completely free with the Netscape
Browser. Although it comes with the latest versions, our pick is version
4.7,
since it has a better, simpler interface.
But, hold on a second, you say: that's pretty cool, but what about graphics
editing-- heck, even image slicing and other important image editing functions?
But you should know by now: Webdesigner-Freebies is already a step
ahead of you. Seems impossible that tasks like image-slicing and
image mapping could be done cheaply. But it can-- with Serif
Photo Free Plus 5.5. This freeware version of Serif Photo Plus
is everything you could ever want in a basic image editor. You can not
only image slice, but create image maps and do some basic functions like
cropping and resizing. Unfortunately, you can't export in .gif format with
the freeware version-- for that you will have to get the CD version of
Photo Plus for the shipping and handling cost of $2.95. But what's
$2.95 for lifetime use compared to 100s of dollars for the most expensive
graphics editor?
|
