Mar
31
Web Page Design and Hosting
Posted by: Diddly | March 31, 2010 | Leave a Comment
A screen shot of my Webpage
I spent the morning looking at web design and HTML authoring using the E-Learning Tool Kit. The activity is pretty long, but quite interesting; Luckily I had a little background knowledge of HTML, which made things a bit quicker as I worked through the tutorial on web page design.
I had never heard of CSS (cascading Style Sheets) before, but it is really great. It makes it much easier to follow the code as you develop a web page, as you can separate much of the formating from the content. It also helps to make the format of the page consistent. I really enjoyed doing the How to Build Websites Tutorial.
I managed to make a simple webpage, but I really didn’t have enough time to build something I would consider uploading. Next I downloaded Amaya (all 20 Mb of it on my limited satellite link!) It isn’t easy to use or intuitive and I couldn’t work out how to have more than one page for my site.
I was getting desperate so I went to Bravenet to have a look at how I would be able to upload something. After registering and giving my personal details, it kept sending me in circles and I couldn’t get a free hosting 🙁 I think the site is a bit of a dud. I did some research and opted for Webs.com instead. There is a small advertising banner across the top, but it isn’t too bad. It was easy to set up a web page and I had the option of uploading my simple creation in HTML. However, after having looked at Web Pages That Suck, I lost confidence and decided to build a site online. It is really easy, though obviously you have less flexibility than doing something from scratch. In fact there is a great similarity between creating a web page and a blog. They are almost the same, really. Each option offers certain style and functionality advantages, so it all depends on what you want to do.
The process of building a web page from scratch is very labor intensive and time consuming. If you are using a WYSIWYG editor, it isn’t much better (especially if you don’t really know how to use the software). I recently wanted a webpage for my school at the university. Honestly I don’t have time to build a webpage, and I don’t know enough about graphic design. I paid a professional, and it wasn’t expensive. I would recommend this for any business. For small time users, I would recommend building online.
Here is my web site: http://englishdiddlyverma.webs.com/. It’s not much yet, but it’s mine 🙂