Build your own website for free: A comedy in 5 easy steps.

In times of economic trouble business owners often look to find ways to cut costs. Today lets take a look at how you can build your own website, for free! (minus web hosting, domain registration and internet fees, of course).

Lets begin with the premise that you already have a great idea for a site, all the content written and you're ready to promulgate your prodigy to the world.


Step 1: Learn good site hierarchy techniques

Before you begin anything else, you will need to decide how your site is going to be structured. A well organized site is easy for your visitors to use, and allows for future growth. Start with the 'home' page and create a site structure that you think would help your site visitors navigate your site the easiest. While it's pretty much simple common sense, head on over to Google and search for website hierarchy and you'll be a structural engineer in no time!


Step 2: Learn the principals of design

Let's face it, a lot of websites out there look a little rough around the edges. They were probably designed in the 90's, which in web terms is positively Pleistoceinian. So it's important that your site have a modern look and feel to differentiate yourself from your competitors. The principals of design are one of the first things student designers learn these days, so it should be a snap for you to pick up. Things like color, balance and proportion are as basic as it gets. Just Google 'principals of web design' and you should be well on your way.

While your at it, you might as well brush up on the basics of User Interface design too. A site that is easy to use is a joy to all the world!


Step 3: Learn Photoshop, Illustrator and Fireworks

These three programs are the professionals choice when it comes to creating site concepts and graphics. Now that you are an expert designer, you'll need these tools bring your concept to life. Just Google any of these apps and you'll find a literal treasure trove of tutorials to do pretty much anything you can think of, and more that you can't. Soon you'll be slingin' bezier curves like a rustler with a lasso - and in no time your design will be ready for the big time.


Step 4: Learn html, CSS and web standards

Now that you've got your Photoshop mock ups polished to perfection, its time to mark them up into semantic HTML documents. HTML is one of the simplest computer languages to learn. Learning to mark it up in a semantic, web standards way is even easier. Simply Google 'semantic html' and you're well on your way to becoming an HTML jockey. And as long as you're in Google, might as well get a pointer or two on web standards, so you can add usability and accessibility expert to your resumé.

And now that you know the ins and outs of web standards, you know how important it is to separate content from presentation, so its off to learn Cascading Style Sheets for you. CSS is almost as easy to learn as HTML, so fire up that text editor and bang out your first reset.css file for instant gratification!


Step 5: Learn a server side scripting language like PHP

If your site is going to be anything longer than a few pages, or have any interactive functionality, you better take a minute or two to pick up PHP or some other server side scripting language. PHP is a snap to learn and there are thousands of other designers and developers out there using it. The internet is full of lessons on how to do this or that, and they are all dead easy to follow along with.

Building your own blog or content management system from scratch is a tad beyond the scope of this tutorial, so you should take the time to get to know some of the blogging engines like Wordpress and Moveable Type. These are open source (read: free!) web publishing apps that are written in a straight forward manner. A few moments poking around the code and you should be publishing your site with the ease of a cms in no time.


Conclusion

A lot of people would like you to think that there is a steep learning curve to building your own site. I hope that I've been able to prove those people wrong here. As you can see, the internet is an open book for you to learn how to build your own site. All it takes is a few easy Google searches.

Further reading

Upon further reflection, there are a few minor things you might want to learn to add to your web design arsenal. But not to worry, like the lessons above, these are all easy to learn and lessons are freely available on the internet:

1. MySQL or other database
2. phpMyAdmin or command line database management
3. Web Hosting intricacies
4. Browser quirks
5. FTP
6. SSH
7. Domain registration
8. JavaScript
9. AJAX
10. .jpg vs .png vs .gif
11. .htaccess
12. Flash

Once you get your masterpiece up and running live, its time to head back to the Google and learn all about getting people visit your site. But I save those lessons for a future 5 step comedy.

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