Hi!everyone.I could really use some help here & it would be greatly appreciated.I'll start by saying that I have my own custom build P.C.So I'm familiar & comfortable w/this end of bizz.K;well I'm paying for a AT&T DSL hook-up.The speed is great & the conn.is quite stable & reliable.Now comes the bombardment of Q's(lol)I am entitled 2 host my own website through my ISP.Well the first prob.is that there so called tools(free)are beneath elementary level.I do not own Dream Weaver or any other web site building program which 2 my knowledge is quite expensive.I need some info.& links etc.that will help me 2 build my site.I am not building this 4 business purposes or to generate revenue.I basically want to build a nice looking site & place all of my poetry,pic.'s & perhaps some animation there.Then of course link this site upon completion to my M~Space site & other various sites that I frequent.Are there programs that are useful but not quite as expensive as Dream Weaver,etc.to assist me with this site build? Or perhaps some free hosting on the animation end of things.I tried free webs.com but I'm constantly being e-mailed w/a host of business options & software to enhance this site.However,none of them are needed or required for this venture.Any ideas or info.would be greatly appreciated.Thx!Godspeed!Cy

I learned from way back to author it
myself. HTML 4.01 is easy enough to
learn; starting with about a dozen
tags and taking it from there.
HTML HEAD TITLE /title /head
cover the top part (preamble). The
TITLE tag is the only one that needs
content. It should be short; it is
the one the page will be saved as in
the other person's bookmarks (long
titles pollute bookmark space by making
them overly wide while trying to use
the bookmark list in the average web
browser).

BODY /body encloses the entire rest of
the page, which ends with /html. The
absolute length of the page should be
reasonable and the entire page should
be about 1/2 to 3/4 of a megabyte of
disk storage (including images) max.
If it gets bigger, split off a second
page to handle that content.

The paragraph tag P separates paragraphs.
Use it where you'd leave a blank line
in a post. BR breaks the end of a long
line; generally used to single-space
entries such as a mailing label (name
on first line, address on second line,
city, state and zip code on third line).

Lists -- OL UL are the two common types.
An OL (ordered list, I think it's called)
numbers the list entries for you. An
UL (unnumbered list) does not (instead
it creates bullet entries).

A (anchor) tags are used for both hot
links (A HREF) and for navigation within
the page (A NAME). Anchors end with a
corresponding /A tag (HTML tolerates it
when you do not include the corresponding
/ENDing tag, but some are required as
they (for example) operate on a specific
text on the page (such as EM for italics;
to know where italics should end, close
with /EM).

HTML is very forgiving as far as breaking
things down to a level where you can
clearly see how it is used; so you can
split complicated things into multiple
lines of HTML codes (tags) mixed in with
the content you're authoring.

When you get one page looking very neat,
it is easy to use that page as a template
for the next, saving a lot of work.

CSS is the recommended method for adding
certain kinds of layout features such
as text centering and justification.

Using a programmer's editor is the way to
go, to get syntax highlighting in HTML.
A good programmer's editor will show you
visually, as you edit, where syntax
errors have occurred. The editors are
somewhat limited, though; at some point
it is important to submit your revision
to a more sophisticated syntax-checking
program (or validator) to ensure your
HTML complies with the standard. That
way everyone gets to enjoy it (especially
those using a different kind of computer
than the one you used to create and view
it).

One of the oldest watchwords here is to
'trust your browser'. What that means is
that if it looks wrong in your browser,
stop; fix the problem. If you don't know
how, either learn how, or back-pedal and
make the page simpler until you understand
how it is rendering what it is rendering.

Learning HTML is not much more difficult
than learning to touch-type: it seems an
unnecessary refinement at first, but
quickly becomes an essential and
productive skillset.

Having said all that, there are several
good web sites that take some of the work
out of it for you, and also provide a
venue to display your work (they have
some inbuilt social networking features).

I'm reluctant to list specific sites here,
as that may not be considered acceptable
by the staff here. E-mail me if you need
a list of places to visit and comprehend.

You could probably do well by typing
'html tutorial' in a search engine as
well.

----
Note: all HTML tags are enclosed with
the less-than and greater-than symbol,
on either side of the tag; I didn't
want the system here to choke on my
post (or throw your browser into a fit)
so I didn't attempt to include them.

Maybe you've already found your answer (I just found this post), but Eclipse (.org) is a great free tool if you plan to write the code for your site on your own. w3schools.com is a good reference if you're new to coding. There aren't many good graphic design programs freely available, though gimp.org may be of use. If this is your first time building a website, Gimp may be a bit much.

Flash is your best bet for animation. You can import just about anything into Flash, but it is a commercial product. To get you started, you could use the 30-day trial from adobe.com. If you just want to animate photos (like a slideshow), lookup "animated gif" on google. Furthermore, adobe.com has alot of trial and developer edition tools, which might be enough to get your initial site built. They also tend to post alot of beta stuff for free on labs.adobe.com.

I hope that helps!

i have my own site but I have to pay 240 a year. I was offered the free website deal but because it was free it had minimal tools to work with. If you really want a website and build it yourself go to www.register.com

Take a peek at the following site:
It does provide a hosting service, but also contains a number of free downloads for creating web pages & tutorials (videos...books..etc.) Hope it helps


http://www.vodahost.com/create_website.htm

I would look into a blog set up for the site. Maybe set up a blog account on a site and post poems there.