Creating a Website: The Missing Manual, 3rd Edition

Getting Web Space

All you need to achieve web superstardom is a domain name and a small amount of space on a web server. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to finding a web host. Instead, you choose a hosting company based on your budget, what you want your website to do, and your own capricious whims (let’s face it—some hosting companies just have way cooler names than others).

What you don’t want is a web host that offers some sort of special software that promises to help you create a website in two or three easy steps (see Figure 3-7). These tools range from mediocre to terrible. After all, if you’re content to create the same cookie-cutter website as everyone else, you probably aren’t interested in learning HTML, and you wouldn’t have picked up this book.

Instead, you want standard website hosting. Here, you’re given a slot of space on a server to manage as you see fit. You create your pages on your own computer, and then copy these files to the server so others can view them. This type of web hosting is all you need to use this book.

Web hosting packages usually charge a monthly fee. For basic hosting, this fee starts at the reasonable sum of $5 to $10 per month. Of course, that cost can escalate quickly, depending on the features you want your host to provide.

Figure 3-7. Page-design wizards give you a quick and easy way to make generic pages. For the truly lazy, ...