How Do I Get a Simple Website Without All the Difficulty?

Since the beginning of the Web, creating a website has been a little out of reach for the novice computer user. But over the past several years, plenty of services help get your content on the web to share with others.

Let's first take a look at what makes up a website. In the most simple terms, a web page is a collection of small text, graphic and media files stored out on the internet that comes with coded instructions for a web browser to assemble into what you see on screen. To see what I mean about the small files, if you are in Safari right now, try clicking and dragging on the graphic image to the left. That's pretty cool, huh? For fun, try dragging a graphic right on to your Preview icon in the Dock or just to your desktop. Now, if you want to see the web page code, go to the View Menu and select View Source. Boring!

There are three stages in creating a standard website: designing what it will look like, making all the parts, and putting it on the internet. Wait! Can't we skip this?

OK, instead let's see what options there are that give us the shortcuts. Most of us are interested in getting our thoughts, pictures and movies on the web in various forms. With this in mind, I'll review some options that are easy and might not have occurred to you.

In order of ease of use…

Social Sharing Sites
Rather than a website of your own, why not look at using a web service for the sharing of your content? Using another site gets you off the hook for all the work of creating a site and you get it for free! So if you want your friends and family to see your latest photos, how about putting them on Flickr? Of course there is the ubiquitous YouTube for videos, and iMovie '08 has a direct publish to YouTube command now . There are also a multitude of competitors to these services to go with if one doesn't meet your needs exactly.

Google Docs
Huh? Google Docs for a web site? Perhaps you didn't know that you can publish the documents you create as individual web pages. Yes, the format might be limited, but you can create text, images, links and tables all in your own colors. Check out this article published as a Google Doc. All you do is create a document as you might in MS Word and then hit the publish tab. Again, it's free and you barely have to do anything.

Social Networking Sites
Another way to have someone handle most of the details for you. For free. Facebook and MySpace are just two of the better known services of this type. And just because you become a member doesn't mean you have to hang out with high school and college kids. Because these are so popular, there are many options to customize these services to meet your needs and there is a lot of community support to help you along the way.

Blogging Sites and Software
Because blogging has gained such rapid popularity, there are fairly mature services and software to support it now. And you aren't required to discuss the minutia of your day. The basic framework of blogs is to have entries that are chronological and categorized or tagged for easy reference. This structure is very common and can apply to most uses of websites. Most blogs also allow for comments with visitors to have a dialog between the blogger and her readers.

Blogs can be created from scratch like a traditional website, but because they are so popular, there are a plethora of templates and services to get an interesting look for your site easily. With blogs, you can pay to host your own under your own domain name, but you can also take the free and easy route and have a blog service host it for you.

Have you noticed something yet about the above solutions? I haven't mentioned a price or which application you use to create the site with. That's because they are free and you do it all within your browser. No software to install, no figuring out code, just upload and go.

Take It Up a Notch
If you don't mind paying $99 a year, dot-mac (.Mac) services will give you more flexibility and add that Apple polish to your website. Dot-mac also is very nicely integrated with software you already own that came on your new Mac. You still won't need to learn anything about making a website and because of the competition from the above free services, it's getting easier and easier to use. Now all they need to do is make it cheaper. Dot-Mac is a good service that we hope will become great when Leopard comes out.

Take Web Galleries for example. Once you are set up on dot-mac, you select a group of photos in iPhoto and then click Web Gallery. And Boom! (to borrow an exclamation), your web page is created for you. This is in direct response to Flickr. Check out the Mosaic View. Apple took what Flickr had and one-upped them with some more user configured options.

And then there's iWeb to put your pictures, movies and blogs into top notch designed templates quickly and easily. This can be done with your own web hosting or under dot-mac. You can also do more with it to create your own look, all without knowing a lick of code. It's really a great way to allow Mac users to create web pages with out the complexity of professional web design.

Tune in next week as we review how to get started in iWeb to create a website with that Apple polish with Building a Simple Website using iWeb.


Did this article open your eyes to some website options you haven't thought of? Do you have any tips of your own to pass on? Let us know in the Comments section below!

DIG DEEPER

Social Sharing Sites
Flickr
YouTube

Social Networking Sites
Facebook
MySpace

Google Docs

Blogging Services
Blogger
TypePad
Vox
WordPress

.Mac from Apple

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