The first thing you should do when thinking about building a site is to sit down and plan it. It is easy to say that your site will be amazing, and quite another when the time comes to build it, so your best bet is to make it as original as possible.
Before you jump straight in and begin building it, decide where the links are going to go, what sections are needed and the type of content that you will put on it.
Once you have chosen your subject and selected the content, then you should make a site map. This is just a little set of boxes showing you what is going to go where and make sure that the site is balanced.
So, you’re planning is done and your site map is made…and there is no more putting it off. Now is the time to get to grips with HTML (hypertext markup language).
It is however, not entirely necessary to learn HTML. You can use WYSIWYG editors to build your webpage.
WYSIWYG stands for ‘what you see is what you get’ and it simply means that you can build your website through a user-friendly interface that will build all the HTML in the background for you.
Popular WYSIWYGs are the Dreamweaver package and the Homesite software. However, there is another way.
Website Content Management Systems (CMS) allow you to easily manage and edit website content and website appearance. They do this by separating the actual content from the content layout/structure.
This means that it becomes very easy to make changes to the appearance of each web page like colour scheme, navigation etc without having to physically edit each page.
They are specifically designed so that a very low level of technical knowledge is required. Meaning you don't need to be a web designer to use them.
Desktop Based Content Management
Almost all modern website editing tools, such as Microsoft FrontPage, have built in content management abilities even though they don't call it that. With FrontPage you can find and replace across the entire site.
You can add repetitive content using ‘webbots’, and you can totally separate the design from the content using style sheets. It is however much more difficult to use than a pure content management system and requires more technical knowledge.
There are purpose built desktop content management systems which are much easier to use. These are not web page editors in the sense of FrontPage, Trellian WebPage, NVU etc but are pure content management systems that allow you to create the website content using a variety of templates without requiring any knowledge of HTML, which is fantastic news for all you website beginners.
This content is stored in a database located on your PC and can then be published to your website, but you cannot use them to edit a web page.
Server Based Content Management Systems
Server Based Content Management systems provide the same easy content production features as desktop based and more besides.
All editing is done on the web and the content is stored in a databases as with desktop based systems but this database is on the Internet.
There are two forms of server based systems, hosted and self-hosted.
With a hosted system, the CMS is owned and maintained by someone else and you access your content and templates and other management features through web pages provided by the system provider.
You may be using one already without realising it. Site building packages like Sitebuild-it use a CMS, they are also used in blogging systems like blogger.com and Wordpress.
With a self hosted option you are required to install the scripts and database and configure the system.
CMS has two main features that make them ideal for inexperienced website owners, the lack of technical knowledge needed to add content and it is easy to change the look and feel of the site.
Next: HTML - the basics
