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Tools You Need To Design A Web Site
If you go to work or school, you need to bring with you your tools of the trade in order to perform what you need to do. Designing a web site is no different. There are tools you need in order to get your site together.
- A Domain Name
- A Web Hosting Company
- Software To Design Your Site
- An FTP Client To Upload Your Finished Pages To The Site
The first two are covered elsewhere on this site. The last two are critical tools to have and I will explain here.
Software To Design Your Site
You really do not have to spend any money to have the software to design your site. If you have any form of computer program that came with your system which creates text documents and can save them in an html format, you already have it on your system. These include Word Pad and Notepad.
The drawback to using these are they are not user friendly. Unless you know exactly what you are doing and do not mind the extra typing involved, this is a good option if you do not want to spend the money on an html design program.
A free version of an html design software is the html pad. It is user friendly and has the code shortcuts to help you create pages faster. However, it is quite old by today's standards. It does not automatically declare a doctype and some of the codes are out of date. If you don't mind going through manual correction to reflect what you are doing to your page to get it up to code, this is a fair option.
Coffee Cup has an excellent html editor which is simple to use, even for beginners. It has more options on codes and formats to use. They update it on a regular basis which assures you correct codes. It is extremely user friendly. There is a choice of WYSIWYG [what you see is what you get] or a basic code editor depending on your skills in html. You can even alter your preferences to tailor it to your specific needs.
FTP Client
An FTP [File Transfer Protocol] client is the way you take the pages you just created on your hard drive and upload them into the web hosting computer so the world can see your pages.
Your web hosting company will send you a welcome package which will include vital information on how to upload pages if you are using an FTP client.
I use Ipswitch WS_FTP which has been very reliable. You can also transfer by a drag and drop method if you have a Windows system. Both methods will require the log in information.To do it by drag and drop, open your web browser and type in the ftp address to your site. It will ask for your log in information and sign you in. Click on the files you want to show up on your site and drag them into the web browser window [or press control and C to copy your selected files and press Control and V on the web browser to paste it or click Publish To The Web in Windows XP.]
With an FTP client, each has a different method of access your site, so be sure to read the instructions.
Some hosts allow you to upload directly through a control panel page on their site. This method works if you cannot figure out the other options. However, if you want more control over your web site and you want to upload your pages faster, it is better to learn to use some type of FTP client.