How to build a stunning website the right way using HTML & CSS

For the purpose of this article, the objective is to focus of building a website using HTML and CSS but one must be sincere that creating a website through this means require the knowledge of an expert.

1)      You must get a DOMAIN NAME. Without a domain name, your website has no meaning. Choose SHORT domain name such as ‘http://www.facialblue.com’ and NOT ‘http://www.thesnakethatmybrotherbattlewithinourbackyardreturnforrevenge.com’ Have you seen the difference? A short domain name attracts search engines to your website easily than a long domain name. Honestly, it will make no sense wasting away your quality website with such long domain name.

2)     Get the Web Host. Here you have the choice to pay or not to host your domain name BUT if you want to succeed and profit extensively from your website, then you MUST pay to host your domain name. Free web host will always link an extra name to your domain. Instead of ‘http://www.facialblue.com’ (that you get if you pay to host), you will have ‘http://www.freebie.facialblue.com’ (if you go for free hosting). I believe you don’t want that single word ‘freebie’ in your domain name.

3)     You can create your website with the web tools (Already have the HTML & CSS code constructed inside though you can’t see them) supplied to you by your host masters like BlueVoda, 1&1, or hostgators. Once you registered with any of them, and depending on your subscription level you paid for, you will be given the ‘create-your-website-page-yourself’ tool. With that, you can easily update your site, rewrite some information and equally update your pictures. You can even get a free website and host name from Google, freehostia, Athost, Doteasy, Zymic, goecities.yahoo.com, Wix, etc.

4)      You have to know that you can create your website with Adobe Dreamweaver software. It is very simple and it automatically helps you to generate the HTML code by itself. It is available for both Mac and Windows operating systems. The new versions, which are Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 & CS4, supports web technologies such as CSS, ColdFusion, ASP.NET, PHP, Visual Basic Script Editor (VBScript), EDML and several others. And it has the site management tools such as FTP/ SFTP and WebDAV file transfer.

5)      Other option is using Microsoft Expression Web, which is part of the Microsoft Expression suite, and it replaced former Microsoft Office FrontPage that was cancelled in 2006. It works mainly for Microsoft Windows operating system. Microsoft Expression Web is WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get acronym) HTML editor and general web design program. It permits the authoring of web pages by integrating CSS, XML, XHTML, ASP.NET 2.0, XSLT but it requires NET. Frameworks 2.0 to operate.

6)      The third Software is Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer. It’s exclusively from SharePoint site and it’s a WYSIWYG HTML editor and web design program. It shares it HTML and UI rendering engine with Microsoft Expression Web and one good aspect of it is that it have most of the features of the former FrontPage.

7)      If you don’t want to use these software mentioned but want to go ahead manually then you have to be prepared for long, long work and learning.

8)      The first thing you must do is CONSTRUCT an ORGANOGRAM to help you decide how you want your website to me. You will need to use MICROSOFT OFFICE POWERPOINT to create this. It is easier but if you have other means of doing this, fine.

9)      You MUST learn how to use HTML & CSS from scratch! It is technical BUT simple if you have the knowledge.  For free HTML & CSS tutorial, CLICK here; http://www.markuptutorials.com/ & http://www.html.net/

You must decide which HTML you want to use. With the evolution of HTML from 1.0, 2.0, 3.2 to 4.0, you have the choice here to choice. Creating HTML is very easy, what you do is to use a text editor such as NOTEPAD to write the HTML that will create your page. It's pretty easy to learn.

Then you save the file as filename.html and save it to the Internet through your web host.

You can also obtain free HTML templates from here;

a)     http://www.2createawebsite.com/build/templates.html

b)     http://www.freelayouts.com/websites/html-templates

Download the free HTML editor here;

a)     http://www.pagebreeze.com/

b)     http://www.coffeecup.com/free-editor/ (CoffeeCup is friendly and has easy step-by-step instructions  to use)

They will help you to edit and continue building your website.

10)  As a extension to basic HTML that allows you to style your web pages, CSS style change would be to make the word BOLD.

All files of CSS are mainly formatted text files of the same way as HTML pages are. It is only the content of the files that make it as it is; which means nothing is special.

CSS is not difficult because you can do the things easily with it that you cannot do with standard HTML but it is extremely powerful, which is why you need extensively knowledge about it.  For free tutorial; http://www.how-to-build-websites.com/lessonFour.php

You will learn about the syntax of CSS, how to create your first style sheet and why it is advisable to choose CSS over HTML for design and layout.

Having specific knowledge about HTML and CSS will help you to build any website easily without any stress BUT if you don’t want to build manually, then I suggest you opt for any of the software I mentioned earlier.