Best Way to Make Your Own Website

It seems so weird, but not long ago nobody knew about the Inter­net. Think of the zillions of Web sites out there for women now. Imagine being the first person to have built the first Web site for women. Aliza Sherman was that person.

Aliza is the original Cybergrrl. She’ll help you get started on your own Web site with this advice:

Ever dream of publishing your poetry? Putting those photo­graphs you take or the artwork you do out there for the whole world to see? Ever thought of sharing your diary with others, anonymously?

You can if you have your own Web site!

Every girl should have a Web site of her own. It should be a rule, like every girl should keep a journal and every girl should have her own computer. The best thing about having your own Web site is that you can control what’s on it. This is your creative space, your place for self-expres­sion—without teachers or parents or editors or anyone else getting in the way of what you have to say. It is All You, All the Time.

So how do you get a simple Web site online, especially if you don’t know the basics of HTML (hypertext markup language), the behind-the-scenes code of Web pages?

Choose a location to build your site. There are several pop­ular Web sites online that actually let you build your own site for free. They make it easy for you, letting you pick things like font size and background color with just the click of a button. If you know how to use a Web browser, then you can build you own Web site. Ask your parent’s permission before you go any further. Here are the best sites for building your own site for free:

•  Geocities: http://geocities.yahoo.com/home
•  Angelfire: http://angelfire.lycos.com/
•  About.com Personal Web pages: http://login.about.com/ pwp.htm

Register. First you have to register on the site (for free) to get access to their Web site building area. No matter what, you should not have to put a credit card number into a registration form to get access to the Web-building tools.

How do these sites offer this service for free? Well, they put ad­vertising on your site, so you do have to put up with their popup banner ads. But on Geocities.com, for example, you get to choose the type of advertising that appears, like celebrities, travel, or pets.

If you don’t want the ads to show up, then you do have to pay a monthly hosting fee. But we’re here to talk about freebies!

Use their cool features. These sites have all kinds of tools to make your site rock. You can download free images or upload im­ages off your own computer, design templates, scripts you can copy that put fun features on your site—like quick polls or a guest book that visitors can sign and leave messages for you—or a counter to see how many people have visited your site.

These sites are set up like communities so you can also visit other member sites to get ideas for your site or to make new friends.

Learn HTML—if you want to. Now, if you want to learn more about Web site building and design, lots of online sites offer free tutorials in HTML, such as these two:

•  A Beginners Guide to HTML: http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/ General/Internet/WWW/’HTMLPrimerPrintable.html
•  HTML: An Interactive Tutorial for Beginners: http://www .davesite.com/ webstation/html/
•  Authoring: HTML Basics: http://hotwired.lycos.com/ webmonkey/teachingtool/
• And there are even a ton of sites that give Web site advice strictly for teens, such as this one:
•  http://directory.google.com/Top/Kids_and_Teens/Comput-ers/Web_Page_Design/

Sure, having a Web site of your own can be educational; but more importantly, it can be just plain fun!

(If you use this information to put up your own Web site, be sure to e-mail me and tell me about it at Julia@edevillers.com. I want to go check it out!)