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Build Your Own Website the Right Way Using HTML & CSS

Building a Website for Seniors in Easy Steps

CSS Web Site Design: Includes Exercise Files and Training Videos (Hands-On Training Series)

The Principles of Beautiful Web Design

Be master of your domain.

Whether you want to promote your business, create a forum for keeping in touch with family and friends, or discuss your favorite band or hobby, you can do so by creating and publishing your own website. Hone your skills by learning to:

Identify the main components of a website
Read the language used to create online content
Design and format a website that's appealing and easy to navigate

Website Basics

The world wide web (www), often referred to simply as the web, is an electronic network of websites, or sites for short. A website is a collection of web pages (digital documents) stored on a computer. Other people can view web pages from any computer that’s connected to the internet, a vast worldwide network of millions of computers. The world wide web is just one of many internet services.

Anyone can build and publish a website at a low cost and without much technical know-how. Here’s how to get your website started:

Register a domain name for your site.
Purchase a web hosting program on which to store your files.
Plan and organize your website.
Learn to use HTML and CSS to create web pages.
Add images to your web pages.
Publish and promote your site.

How the Web Works

To understand how the web works, familiarize yourself with some basic terminology:

Browser: This software program is used to view web pages. Popular browsers include Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Safari.
Domain name: The main name of a website. It usually begins with www and ends in .com, .org, .net, or another suffix. To access a site, users type its domain name into a browser. For instance, in www.quamut.com, “quamut.com” is the domain name.
URL: An acronym for uniform resource locator, a URL is the unique address of each page on the web. It can refer to entire sites, such as www.quamut.com, or specific pages, such as www.quamut.com/about.html. URLs usually include the prefix http://.
IP address: Each computer on the internet is assigned a specific numerical address, called an IP address. Each domain name is associated with at least one IP address.
Client/server: Clients are computers used to view web pages. Servers are computers that serve, or distribute, web pages.
Link: This is an electronic reference that connects one web page, or site, to another. Web users move from one site to another by clicking on links.
Hypertext: This is electronic text that contains links.
HTML: An acronym for hypertext markup language, HTML is the computer code used to create web pages.
CSS: An acronym for cascading style sheets, CSS documents control the appearance and positioning of web page content.
FTP: An acronym for file transfer protocol, FTP is soft-ware used to move files between computers. Website builders use FTP to upload HTML files to servers.

How Web Pages Are Served

When you open up your browser and view a web page, an exchange between your computer (the client) and a remote computer (the server) has already taken place. Here’s a quick breakdown of what happens:

You type a URL into your browser’s blank address bar.
Computers called name servers then point your browser to other computers whose IP addresses are associated with the domain name in the URL.
Your browser loads the page you requested and its related components from the server where they reside.
The browser formats the page for viewing based on the instructions in the CSS and HTML documents associated with the web page you requested.