How To Make a Homepage

Making a good homepage is a task that requires hours of work in front of a bright, eye destroying monitor, punching those little buttons on your keyboard, possibly paying for not only an Internet connection but for a domain name, space on the world wide web, and either a second phone line or not receive calls for hours at a time, not having much of a life outside of your house/apartment, and not getting a dime for it. Wow. So why is the Internet expanding faster than the enormous wart on Aunt Gloria's nose? Two reasons.

REASON NUMBER ONE: Some people actually do make money from it. Lots of money. Some businesses are Internet oriented, or have web pages selling their product. You can also make web pages for companies, and maybe even get a percent of the profits generated from your work. Or, you can create fake credit card numbers, and go to jail. I don't recommend the latter one, mainly because it is illegal. Duh.

REASON NUMBER TWO: It is very cool to see your name on the Du. It may seem silly and stupid, but at least 90% of the World Wide Web is personal pages that have no real point, other than, "Hi, I'm Joe Johnson. I have a cat named pookie, and a big bald spot. Here's my picture!" Yes, it is the sad truth about the internbookiethe commercials, all the magazine ads, all the talk about the wonderful, mind expanding internetbookiehype. Well, not all hype, there are some very worthwhile, mind expanding pages (like, for example, Dan's Homepage of STUFF). But the main reason people create their own slice of the HTTP pie is because they can. So, the main thing you need to consider is why you are creating your homepage. Are you making a page to help your business sell fake doggy doo, or are you doing it to say hi to all of your alien friends?

Alright, now that we have the reason for making a homepage, we need to get into a server. A server is the main computer that is actually connected to the light all the time. It is the computer you will upload (the opposite of download! Duh!) your files to. Many services, like GeoCities, Tripod, and others offer 2 megabytes for free, and more space can be purchased for monthly payments. I know, 2 meg doesn't sound like much, but unless you plan on setting up a warez with major apps, 2 meg will be plenty for your web page. I, of course, highly recommend Tripod.

Okay, so now you've set up your account on the world wide web. Like I said before, everything with computers, especially the me, depends on what your purpose is. Say, for example, you want to sell a product. Well, you are going to want to have the best, most professional - looking page out there. You want your site to be VERY EASY to NAVIGATE. This is always a must. I have found that the easiest way to make a simple-to-navigate site is to use frames. There are an abundance of frames tutorials out there, not to mention programs like HotDog that automate the entire web publication process. Yes, now, you can make your own impressive web site with a few quick clicks. These programs are wonderful, and include everything like a spell checker, syntax checker, (reads your html on the fly and corrects it) and, well....everything. I highly recommend HotDog for Win95. It's great.

COMING SOON: more stuff. what did you expect?