Table of Contents

Welcome to Create Your Own Website! 1

 

1 Creating Your First Web Page 5

The Components of a Website . . . . . . . . . . 7

    Serving Web Pages with a Web Server. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

    Understanding Website Domain Names. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

    Web Pages, the Building Blocks of a Website . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Knowing Your Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Building Web Pages Using Web Page

    Authoring Software Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

    Installing SeaMonkey . . . . . . . . . . . 15

    Starting SeaMonkey’s Composer. . 17

Creating a Web Page with SeaMonkey Composer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

    Changing the Font . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

    Making Text Bold, Italic, and Underlined . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

    Changing the Colors . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

    Positioning Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

    Saving the Web Page . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

 

2 Creating a Website 29

Finding a Web Host Provider . . . . . . . . . . 30

    Important Web Hosting Metrics. . . 31

    Picking a Web Hosting Company . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Registering a Domain Name . . . . . . . . . . 34

    Choosing and Buying a Domain Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

    Configuring the Domain Name . . 36

Uploading Web Pages from Composer to Your Website . . . . . . . . . . . 37

Building a Website from a Template . . 41

Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

 3 Creating a Family/Personal Website 45

Examining the Family/Personal Template . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

Customizing the Template. . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

    Changing the Upper-Left Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

    Specifying Image Properties . . . . . 49

    Removing the Image Altogether. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

    Changing the Font . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

    Adding and Removing Pages from the Template . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

Customizing the Family Pictures Page. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

    Adding New Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

Publishing Your Family/Personal Website. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

    Placing Linked Files in the Same Folder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

    Testing the Website . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

 

4 Creating an Online Storefront 63

Examining the eCommerce Website Template . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

Customizing the Home Page . . . . . . . . . . 66

Configuring the Add to Cart Buttons. . 67

    Creating a PayPal Premier Account. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

    Getting the Add to Cart Button HTML . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

    Adding the Add to Cart Button into the Template . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

Viewing the Shopping Cart. . . . . . . . . . . . 79

Tying It All Together–A True Online Shopping Experience. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

 

5 Selling Products with an eBay Store 85

Simplify the Sales Process with eBay Stores. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

Creating and Customizing Your eBay Store. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

    Managing Your Store . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

Adding Products to Your eBay Store . . . 93

Collecting Payments and Order Fulfillment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96

Taking Advantage of Marketing Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

Sales and Traffic Reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

    Inspecting Your Site’s Traffic. . . . 100

    Tracking Sales . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

 

6 Creating a Blog with Blogger 103

What Do You Blog About? . . . . . . . . . . . 105

Creating a Blog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105

Adding Content to Your Blog. . . . . . . . . 109

Customizing Your Blog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

    Examining the Basic Tab. . . . . . . 116

    Altering the Blog’s Appearance Through the Formatting Tab . . . . . . . . . . . 117

    Managing Comment Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118

    Archiving Old Content . . . . . . . . . 120

    Working with Postings via Email . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121

Customizing the Blog’s Template. . . . . 122

Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126

 

7 Sharing Images Online with Snapfish 127

Choosing an Online Image Sharing Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128

    Creating an Account on SnapFish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129

Uploading and Managing Your Digital Pictures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131

    Adding Pictures to Your Account. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132

    Editing and Deleting Your Pictures and Albums. . . . . . . . . . 135

Sharing Your Pictures and Albums with Friends and Family. . . . . . . . . . . . 138

Ordering Prints and Gifts. . . . . . . . . . . . . 142

Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144

 

8 Hanging Out and Making Friends at

MySpace 147

Joining MySpace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149

Expanding Your Profile. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153

    Customizing Your Profile Page’s Layout and Colors . . . . . . . . . . . . 155

    Configuring Your Name Information. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156

Creating a Blog and Sharing Your Pictures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158

    Uploading and Sharing Your Photos. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158

    Expressing Yourself with Your Blog. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160

Growing Your Social Network . . . . . . . . 163

    Making New Friends . . . . . . . . . . . 164

Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166

 

9 Posting Your Videos on YouTube 167

Getting Started with YouTube . . . . . . . . 168

    Creating an Account . . . . . . . . . . . 169

Uploading Your Videos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171

Viewing and Managing Your Videos . 175

Customizing Your Channel . . . . . . . . . . 176

    Customizing Your Channel Info . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177

    Changing Your Channel’s

    Colors and Layout . . . . . . . . . . . . 178

    Organizing Your Videos . . . . . . . . 179

    Sharing Personal and Location Information. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180

Embedding YouTube Videos into Your Website . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181

    Embedding a Video in a Blog. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182

Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185

 

10 Staying Connected with Facebook 187

Building a Social Network on Facebook. . 188

Finding Friends on Facebook. . . . . . . . . 189

An Overview of Your Facebook Home Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194

Viewing and Editing Your Profile. . . . . 196

    Configuring Your Privacy Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198

Receiving Notifications. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201

Using Facebook’s Applications . . . . . . . 202

Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205

 

11 Bonus Material 207

HTML—The Language of Web Pages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208

Understanding How the Internet Works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212

    Examining How the Postal Service Works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212

    The Internet as a Virtual Postal Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213

Optimizing Your Digital Pictures. . . . . 218

    Resizing Digital Images . . . . . . . . 219

Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222

About the Author

Create Your Own Website is author Scott Mitchell's eighth book; his others are Sams Teach Yourself Active Server Pages 3.0 in 21 Days (Sams); Designing Active Server Pages (O'Reilly); ASP.NET: Tips, Tutorials, and Code (Sams); ASP.NET Data Web Controls Kick Start (Sams); Teach Yourself ASP.NET in 24 Hours (Sams); Teach Yourself ASP.NET 2.0 in 24 Hours (Sams); and Teach Yourself ASP.NET 3.5 in 24 Hours (Sams). Scott is a regular columnist for Microsoft's MSDN Magazine and has authored more than 1,000 online articles on his website, 4GuysFromRolla.com. Scott's nonwriting accomplishments include speaking at numerous technical user groups and conferences across the country. Scott also teaches web technology classes at the University of California--San Diego University Extension. In addition to teaching and writing, Scott is a software developer. He works as an independent consultant and has authored and sold several commercial software applications.