One easy way, although it generates pretty messy HTML code, is to design your page in Microsoft Word β€” or almost any other word processor. Then, when saving it, choose “Save as Web Page.” Be sure to name it index.htm, as that is used as the name for the default webpage on almost any web server.

You could buy a copy of Microsoft FrontPage (no longer current) or Microsoft Expression Web 2, but that’s kind of expensive, especially for a beginner. There are also some free editors that you can download - both text editors designed for web page creation and WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editors. See my article on the free web design program .

If you want a good beginning book on HTML that’s not very expensive, my favorite is HTML for the World Wide Web. I have it, I like it. In fact, I have two copies — 4th Edition and 5th Edition. Now, there is a new 6th edition, with a name change to HTML, XHTML, and CSS, Sixth Edition (Visual Quickstart Guide)

There are a number of “Usenet” newsgroups on the Internet that can have helpful answers about building a web page or web site. Some are friendly to beginners, others aren’t, so read some of the messages in a newsgroup before posting there.

In fact, read the recent messages for content, too, as Usenet participants are ready to flame anyone who asks the question that was asked “last week.” You can search the Usenet groups via http://groups.google.com.

There are a lot of tutorials on the Web about various aspects of creating a web page or web site. Use your favorite search engine to find some of those.

My sites moved to Hostgator include:
DrawingOnTheWeb.com (this site)
TerrysComputerTips.com
blog.TerrysComputerTips.com
PCRepairSite.info. I’ve still got some more to go…

I’ve noticed a lot more speed in my page delivery, download speed on files and, especially, anything that requires MySQL database access. WordPress blogs run much faster now!

Hostgator has a 20% off special running until June 1st, 2008 β€” use the coupon code here It’s good for the initial purchase, e.g., for 3 years on a 3-year purchase or 1 month if you purchcase monthly hosting. I went for the 3-year “Baby” hosting package, which has 600GB space, 6,000GB monthly throughput, and a lot more. They even offer reseller hosting β€” and the coupon code works for it, too!

HostGator includes cPanel for easy administration of your account and Fantastico for easy installation of blogs, photo galleries, forums, content management systems and a lot more.Β  Of course, you can install any of those manually, if you choose, as well as install your own scripts.

As always, I recommend purchasing your domain name from someone other than your web host (even if they’re willing to give it to you for free). I use GoDaddy for all my domain registration.

If you know how to use blogs you can easily get more traffic to your website just by posting your keywords in the title and having your blogs indexed.

Other ways to get traffic to your site is to use popular free traffic exchanges. They come in many forms such as start (homepage) exchanges, safelists (opt in email ads), toolbar ads systems and ad forums.

If you are looking to kill 2 birds with one stone, you can advertise for free on a new BLOG that actually allows you to place your ads for free on their site.

The reason this is good because you get all the benefits of placing your ads on a BLOG and you all get to advertise for free.

Most people would look at this as a no brainer. Although most webmaster do not like people to advertise on the blogs, this site was made just for that.

It is free to join and thousands are flocking to this service to drive huge traffic to their sites in ju8st days by simply posting one little ad on their home page.

Check out Free Web Advertising at  http://www.free-advertising-blog.com/Advertise-Free/167

Recapping the information about Callwave:

CallWave Fax to Email lets me have a local fax number — in whatever area code that I desire — that receives faxes, turns them into Adobe Reader PDF files, and emails them to me.

I get all that for $7.95 per month, with an unlimited number of faxes received (some of their competitors have higher prices AND limits on how many faxes you can receive!). CallWave offers a risk-free trial — try it for 30 days. If you don’t like it, cancel it before the 30 day trial is up and owe nothing.

Amazingly, this whole service costs much less than a phone line would cost, plus, I don’t to worry about the machine itself, paper, ink or toner. PDF’s are easier to keep, too — of course I can print the PDF if I really want a hard copy.

Continue reading Another Fax to Email Alternative

The other good news — the doors will open Wednesday, September 26th, to add a few more members.

Sign up for AdsenseAccelerator for better keyword research — frequency, bids,  competing ads, and now more languages and countries info.

AdsenseAccelerator Opens Again to New Members on Wednesday September 26th!
…for a few more members.
The Last few times it has opened to add new members,
it sold out in less than a week.
Don’t miss your chance to use AdsenseAccelerator!
If you’re too late, sign up for the Waiting List…

It’s actually a book to lead we non-artistically skilled web designers through a quick graphics and art education — complete with plenty of pictures and walk-through how-to examples.

Take a look at The Principles of Beautiful Web Design. I think you will like it as much as I do.

Powweb’s regular web hosting price is $7.77 per month for their “One Plan” package - It’s a great package (I’m using it!) with 300GB space, 100GB throughput per day (per DAY, not per month!), FrontPage extensions, POP3 mail, webmail, SMTP (outbound) email, install wizards to install blog software, photo galleries, ecommerce shopping carts and more.  Plus, get a free domain name for a year!

If you don’t want to use the wizards, you can download server packages like WordPress from elsewhere and then upload them yourself to get the ultimate in control. Apache, PHP, Perl, MySQL - the big packages that let you do everything you need to do — without Windows servers!

See all the Powweb services in the One Plan here.

Their special is $5.77 per month — and you can get it on their main page — but you can get another $10 off the total by using this special Powweb discount page

But, did you know you can get a head start on the competition by researching keywords, prices and competing ads — that you can see what’s actually happening on Google?

That’s the function of Adword Accelerator, the program and online database that is designed to help YOU make your Adwords spending more effective.

Normally all you can do is sign up on the waiting list, so you can join when the doors open again.

But, AdwordAccelerator opened the doors for a few new members. The slots will go quickly.

Sign up for AdwordAccelerator here

If you’re monetizing your content-sites with Adsense, you’ll find a focused keyword research system for Adsense in the sister product AdsenseAccelerator.

The eMiniMalls system (the starting point for new publishers) provides a tabbed interface for ads, multiple sizing, even multiple products per ad, color choices for text, background, borders, the ability to include a search tab, and lots more.

You can even pick “context-sensitive” ads or choose the keywords yourself. At first, you might wonder why you wouldn’t want context-based advertising. The reason is that, if you use other context-based advertising, the Chitika context-based ads might violate the rules of the other system). The ability to choose the ad keywords yourself solves that issue — and you can even enter a set of keywords for an individual adblock that will be used randomly.

I’ve found the Chitika eMinimalls to be rather effective in monetizing my sites. If you’ve got a content site, you should check out Chitika eMiniMalls for your site.

Make sure you have clear directions on the navigation of your website. The navigation menu should be uncluttered and concise so that visitors know how to navigate around your website without confusion.

Reduce the number of images on your website. They make your site load more slowly and more often than not they are very unnecessary. If you think any image is essential on your site, make sure you optimize it using an image editing program so that it has a minimum file size.

Keep your text paragraphs at a reasonable length. If a paragraph is too long, you should split it into separate paragraphs so that the text blocks will not be too large. If a block of text that is too large, your visitors will skim over the content &mdasah; or worse, skip over your content.

Make sure your web site complies to HTML and CSS web standards at www.w3.org and make sure they are cross-browser compatible. If your website looks great in Internet Explorer but breaks horribly in Firefox and Opera, you will lose out on a lot of prospective visitors.

Don’t use browser-level scripting languages, like Javascript, to handle or manipulate data or to create visual effects on your website. Heavy scripts will slow down the loading time of your site and even crash some browsers. Also, scripts are not supported across all browsers, so some visitors might miss important information because of that.

Don’t create your web site with Adobe Flash, or at least not entirely with Adobe Flash, if you want the search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN to be able to index your pages. The search engines can not read Adobe Flash.

Use CSS to style your page content. You can save yourself a lot work by styling all elements on your website in one step.