| Building
A Family Website Good news: it's a lot easier than you think. By Sandy Lawrence Edry (1/22/01)
Step One: Location, Location, Location. First, you need to decide where you want to put down cyber-roots. For $70 you can register your own domain name-the stuff that goes between the "www" and the ".com"--through Network Solutions for two years. Or you can try one of the free registration services like Namezero.com that provides limited services and upgrade later. Remember, though, many popular names have already been registered, so you may need to get creative. And the price doesn't necessarily include the monthly fees you'll pay to have someone host the site. That's why many Web-building newbies use Web hosting companies like Geocities, Homestead.com and Freeservers.com, or with Internet service providers (ISPs) like America Online and Earthlink, which provide members with space on their servers. The good news is they're free and provide a community of other personal Web pages. The bad news is you often have to put up with annoying ads appearing on each Web page. Check out http://www.freewebspace.net for a comprehensive searchable database of free hosting services. Step Two: Drawing Up the Blueprint You'll get a funny looking house if you build the bedroom walls before deciding where to put the kitchen. Likewise, a Web site takes some planning before you put it together. How many pages will your site have? What type of information do you want to include? One page can have the latest in household news, another can list your family tree, and yet another can include a gallery of photos from your most recent vacation. But start simple, with no more than four to seven pages. Once you have your site's basic architecture in place, adding new pages is easy. Step Three: Decorating Without Martha Stewart Now comes the fun part: Gather all the material you want to include on your pages--take Junior's art masterpieces off the refrigerator, pull out the family albums, and type up those stories Grandpa likes to tell. To digitize the art and photos you'll need access to a scanner, many of which are inexpensive and come bundled with photo editing software. But if you don't have one, ask your local copy shop whether they offer scanning services. Then you can edit the graphics in software programs that range from the easy-to-use Microsoft's PictureIt! 2001 ($40) and PhotoDraw 2000 2.0 ($110) to more powerful (and expensive) programs like Adobe Photoshop 6.0 ($609). Plus you can buy a digital camera and download pictures of the kiddies right into your computer. For additional illustrations to jazz up your pages, download clip art and animations from sites like ClipArt.com or ArtToday.com. Step Four: Get Out Your Cyber-Saw and Hammer Fortunately, most of today's Web building programs let you drag and drop text, pictures, and even sound and video files right onto the page you're building, without forcing you to get your hands dirty with the Web's programming language, HTML. However, even with a hosting service, skip the Web building software they provide-it's usually more confusing than helpful and turns out cookie cutter designs. Instead, buy a program like Allaire HomeSite 4.5 (basic but HTML-intensive, $100), Microsoft FrontPage 2000 (intermediate, $250) or Macromedia Dreamweaver 3 (advanced, $300) that can let you create a site tailored to your particular tastes. Step Five: Call the Movers Perhaps the most complicated part of creating a Web site is moving the material from your computer to cyberspace. Usually, you'll need to FTP (File Transfer Protocol) the pages to the hosting service's computer servers but some Web hosting sites now let you use your browser and even e-mail to upload. Still, unless you are some latent computer geek, you should probably have your ISPs technical assistance number handy when you try your first transfer. But after a few times, it will become as easy as ABC. Put another way, no longer are cruises the domain of retirees looking to scare up a game of shuffle deck, or swinging singles looking for that quick hook up. They're now kid-friendly, all-inclusive resorts, with such amenities onboard as ice rinks, computer labs, rock climbing walls, teen discos, and even nurseries for the smallest of sailors. Step Six: Party On the Web Now there's only one more thing to do: Throw a Web-warming party. Send e-mail to all your relatives and friends and invite them to visit your new home on the Web. Too bad browsers can't transmit cake over the Internet - at least not yet.
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