Product Description

If you, like millions of other people, have ever dreamed of creating your own website but haven't actually done so because you think it will be too difficult, think again. Chances are, you already have all the skills you need to create a website and Create Your Own Website, Second Edition will show you how to use them. Walk through the entire website building process, from registering a domain name to uploading web pages, with the author at your side. Specifically, you will learn how to create:

• A family website
• A hobby website
• An eBay storefront
• A blog
• An image sharing directory

If you can use a word processor, you can create your own website with what you already know and the help of this book!

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #787830 in Books
• Published on: 2005-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

About the Author
Scott Mitchell has authored hundreds of articles on Microsoft Web Technologies since 1998. In addition to his vast collection of online articles, Scott has written three previous books on ASP/ASP.NET: Sams Teach Yourself Active Server Pages 3.0 in 21 Days; Designing Active Server Pages; and ASP.NET: Tips, Tutorials, and Code. Scott has also written a number of magazine articles, including articles for Microsoft's MSDN Magazine and aspPRO.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Introduction

Welcome to Create Your Own Website!

As the popularity of the Internet and the World Wide Web have risen since its beginnings in the early 1990s, virtually all businesses have established an online presence. Many individuals, too, have left their imprints on the web, creating a website for their family, or posting pictures of their vacations. If you want to join the millions of people who have created websites, but fear you lack the background or expertise for such an endeavor, this book is for you!

In this book you'll see just how easy creating a website can be. The CD included with this book contains four professional website templates and a free web page editor. With the web page editor you can quickly and easily customize the provided templates into your very own personal websites. Using the web page editor is as simple as using a word processor program. It's just point and click!

Since there are a number of different types of websites on the Internet, this book's CD includes four different templates for four different types of sites. Specifically, the four provided templates will let you quickly create the following types of sites:

1. Family websites—With a family website you can share pictures of you and your family with friends and members of your extended family.

2. Hobby websites—A hobby website allows you to share your hobbies with others who have similar interests.

3. Community websites—With a community website your church, club, bowling team, or other group or association can post information, schedules, pictures, and other pertinent information.

4. Online storefront website—Sell products online by accepting credit card payments with an online storefront site.

In addition to showing you how to build your own websites from the ground up, this book also includes four chapters on how to use existing web applications to quickly create common websites. Specifically, you'll see how to:

• Sell products at eBay Stores—eBay Stores are a quick and easy way to start selling products online. With eBay Stores, your products are listed on eBay.com and payment processing is handled for you by eBay. You simply list your products for sale and ship them when purchased!

• Publish content online with a blog—A blog is a type of website designed to allow a user to quickly and easily publish content online. Blogs are springing up all over the World Wide Web, used by both individuals and businesses alike.

• Share your digital pictures—You've just gotten back from your vacation to Tahiti with gobs of digital pictures. How do you easily share these beautiful pictures with your friends and family? Digital picture sharing websites make it easy to upload your pictures, share them with select friends and family, and order prints.

• Create a Homepage on MySpace—MySpace is one of many "social networking" websites, where visitors can stay in touch with friends, meet their friends' friends, and make new social contacts. In addition to maintaining and growing your network of friends, MySpace makes it easy for you to create your own web pages, post pictures, share music, and host a blog.

Whether you want to build your own, unique website or use a pre-existing web application, you'll learn everything you need to know to start building your own website today with this book. Get ready to see just how fun and easy it is to create your very own websites!

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

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Customer Reviews

Fun to Read, Accurate to the Max.
Reading this book allows someone to create five different styles and types of Websites by walking the reader through accessing Composer and desired templates, altering the text, color, and photos to personalize each Webpage, obtain a host provider, register a domain name, and publish each Webpage to a Web server.
* Chapter 1 introduces the basic functions of what a browser and Web page are, while showing the reader how to down load a free software program provided with the book.
* Chapter 2 describes the logistics of setting up a public location for viewing Web pages on the Internet by locating a host provider.
* Chapter 3 discuses customizing a Family/Personal Website template by using Composer like any other word processor, adding or deleting pages, and saving with a URL to the same folder located on the reader's computer.
* Chapter 4 continues with detailed items in "Creating a Hobby Website" by scaling images, changing existing hyperlinks, adding rows, discussing anchors, and the effect they have on sharing information with Website viewers.
* Chapter 5 "Creating a Website for an Organization" introduces obtaining a map from the Internet to replace the templates generic sample, offering email access to customers, and providing additional tips.
* Chapter 6 "Creating an Informational Website for Your Business" shows how to customize color within cells, add tables for creating coupons, and setting navigational hyperlinks.
* Chapter 7 "Creating an Online Storefront" deals with how to implement an e-Commerce Website by merging with "Creating Paypal Merchant Account" Website. With this tool, advanced programming skills that are typically required to create a shopping cart, a means to accept payment, and the functions of using forms for transferring users from one Website to another are eliminated. This lifts those advanced tasks off the reader and transfers them onto Paypal's Website in exchange for a small percentage of the product profit.
* The Bonus Chapter goes into more depth covering specific topics, like HTML, Understanding How the Internet Works, Domain names, and Optimizing Your Digital Pictures.

Throughout this book, the author highlights topics that have been covered in Shelly Cashman's "Discovering Computers" text book. One is how the Internet works. Scott Mitchell relates the Internet to the U.S. post office and adds a picture that gives a simple analogy for beginners. I appreciated the comparison, and could visualize the delivery process of digital information clearly (Mitchell 130).

The second item introduced in chapter 2 explained the concept of bandwidth. Mitchell shares very practical information related to space and cost that should be considered when choosing a host provider. The nominal comparisons made corresponding to bandwidth gave me a better appreciation for this concept.

The title "Create Your Own Website Using What You Already Know" very accurately describes what to expect out of the contents and functionality this book provides. The reader will be happy to know that the author's voice is very excited to share information in a reassuring way. Scott Mitchell continually keeps the reader in touch with the fact that the process he is laying out will be fun and easy to do, that the reader will not only learn the process but enjoy going through it.

I found the way the information was presented kept the progression of details simple enough for a first timer to feel very comfortable using and exploring all the items introduced.

No HTML? No HTML!
Mitchell gives us a breezy, confident approach to making a website. He emphasises that, within reason, you can do it all by yourself. With the aid of this book, naturally.

He walks us through the templates on the CD that comes with the book. The general thrust is to show how if you can read and write, well, then you can make a website. There is certainly more involved than in merely using a browser to peruse the web. But the book gives a total absence of HTML tags, until the last chapter. Instead, Mitchell lists 3 web authoring tools - Microsoft's FrontPage, Macromedia's Dreamweaver and Mozilla's Composer. These handle the grungy details.

You can regard this book as an independent validation of the claims made for the above tools. Indeed, no programming appears to be necessary for a simple website.

Along these lines, the chapter on making an online storefront is well done. The example storefront is actually quite limited. But even so, to have it running without programming is impressive.

Up in Running in Minutes
I just purchased Microsoft FrontPage 2003 and FrontPage Step by Step. There was no help in creating a website to sell items in the help section of FrontPage or in the book FrontPage Step by Step. After reading this book, I had an item up for sale on the internet within thirty minutes. Great book! No programming in HTML required. Just copy and paste.