Courtesy of the OPW Staff
The information below is designed to help you create an effective and professional looking web site on a small budget.
To start, you need storage space somewhere on the web. Many access providers have a few megs set aside for each account. OPW uses AOL which allows us 10 megs of space and prior to unlimited service some huge AOL bills. However, we do have access to some very good free customer service. That is a key component when building and maintaining your site. We designed another site with a different web company and the customer service was ...... extremely poor. Each new problem took two weeks and a few nasty letters to be resolved. We finally had to dump them.
Check with your provider to see if they offer free space with the account. If your service provider doesn't have space available, shop around. There are plenty of providers with free space available. And always check out the customer service, otherwise you too can say the service is....poor and wait forever to fix something simple.
You can break this page into 4 steps. First you will need some virus protection, second you will need to decide which HTML editor you feel comfortable with. Getting some graphics programs is in third and finally, you'll need a way to get your site onto a server.
Below are some descriptions and direct links to good programs that will allow you to complete each step. Good luck..
Before you begin to download the software needed to build your site, you will want some protection from programs called viruses. A simple definition of a virus can be: A program written for the purpose of doing permanent damage to a hard drive.
Your computer is at risk when you download from the internet. To prevent this from happening, you need an "anti-virus" program to kill any nasty bugs in the downloaded software. Although it didn't seem to matter when we got the wazzu virus. Which resurrected itself every few weeks. Perhaps the undisputed champion "anti-virus" software is from McAfee. Visit their site to get a sample copy of the program at:
Or you may try Norton at:
There are two ways to get your web pages into Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML). You can be like a friend of ours who writes HTML with a text editor (Calls himself the unabomber HTML writer). Or you can get an HTML editor which allows you to type English or your language and converts the text into HTML. We use the latter because it is too easy. There are several programs around. Below are some of the better ones. The original OPW site was created with GNN press. Our decision was based on the amount of customer service we received from GNN. GNNpress has now become AOL press and is available from AOL directly.
Software name: Hot Dog- This program requires a few files that are easily located at Sausage and or on AOL, Prodigy, CompuServe. Sausage also provides many different graphical enhancement software packages. When visiting make sure you use Netscape to see it all.
Software Name: AOL Press or Navipress
America Online This software has the best interface out of all HTML editors. Hands down it is the easiest HTML writer available. Almost like using a MS word or Word Perfect document.
Software Name: Microsoft FrontPage
http://www.microsoft.com (Please check to see if your service provider accepts FrontPage extensions before using this product) This product is available from your local software store.
Mag's
Big List of HTML Editors
Graphics do add to the image of your site. Too many graphics will slow a viewer's download time. Many people will just hit stop and go elsewhere if your site doesn't appear within a few seconds. You want visitors to be able to zip through the site, get what they came for and get on with their lives.
There are many sites with free clipart images. You need only to visit a search engine and type in, "clipart" to find them. For those of you who have CD ROMS of images from companies such as Corel or others, you will need to convert the images into the .gif or .jpg formats. One of the best programs around is called Paint Shop Pro. A free sample is available at:
Software Name: Paint Shop Pro
This program will also allow you to create your own images.
An incredible amount of graphics related software and links can be found at:
http://www2.ncsu.edu/bae/people/faculty/walker/hotlist/graphics.html
Now that you have your HTML editor and your graphics needs are satisfied, creating the web site and putting it on the web are next. There are several programs that are designed to FTP ( File Transfer Protocol) your pages onto the web. If you went with AOL press or MS FrontPage then you don't need to download anything else to get going. For the others, you need a program called WS_FTP. It's easy to use and has been called the best by many. WS_FTP is also much faster than the others.
Software name: ws_ftp
There are many ways to get people to visit your site. The most effective and common way is to list yourself with the search engines. Each engine is different and has restrictions and other items to look for. We planned to write an article on these differences and provide some tips on how to submit URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) to the engines. That was until we discovered another site that outlines everything you need know about promoting your site. Visit:
Author: Jim Rhodes
How to promote your business web site (Although geared towards business... personal pages can use this info to their advantage as well)
Be sure to check out his other pages regarding marketing and web site design.
We like this site and the attitude presented.
Misc. Software
Below is a small list of software programs you may wish to download.
Free Agent: A Newsreader that works very well and is considered the best.
News X-press : Another excellent newsreader
Netscape : The "world's" premier browser
Pegasus Mail : Mail client
Eudora mail : Mail client
Where is Internet Explorer you say? Well... we don't like. It occasionally tells people it sent a form response (an order) and it really doesn't. Then somebody sends an e-mail saying where is my 2 week old order and we have to spend 20 minutes looking up a name that doesn't exist because I.E. never sent the message, it tends to get to you. Until that bug is fixed I.E. stays out of this list.
You now have direct access to the best programs available ( according to most people). It's now up to you to decide what your site will look like. Once you are up and running take a moment to drop us your address. We would like to see your masterpiece.
Although much of the software above is free, some companies offer trial periods for the software. After your trial period expires, it is entirely up to you to send them any monies due. OPW and its staff accept no responsibility for the loss of sales or uncollected fees for software usage and or fees due. It is up to the user and manufacturer to settle any monetary agreements.
Furthermore, OPW offers no warranty, express or implied as to the performance of any software or comments mentioned herein. This page is posted as an informational page only. Any financial transactions that occur between yourself and any entity on the other side of the links presented here are your own responsibility.
BEST WISHES & GOOD LUCK
From the
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