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The Computer Zone is related to anything pertaining to computers except for gaming and gaming is covered in its very own section The Gaming Zone.

Making A Website
When Keeping It Simple Works Best For You

Disclaimer: User beware use information and links is at your own risk for I take no responsibility or liability in anyway.

Designing a website can be an expensive proposition such as needing a graphic program for making your graphics, word processor for creating your text, and then the actual web site designer program for making a website using the finished products from your graphic and word processing program. Now many of your commercial programs are very expensive feature laden packages and if you want to make a simple website you are paying for features you are not going to use then it does not seem like a good deal. Especially if this more feature laden software has a high learning curve and takes your simple website and turns it into a complicated project.

Now I know that many people like to make their websites with all the bells and whistles, but not all browsers render all choses bells and whistles. To have all those bells and whistles your need a more feature laden program to render your website then this article is not for you. This article is for making a simple website with low cost and no cost programs that are easily found on the net with the aid of a good search engine.

The first component for making a website is a graphics program that is capable creating, editing, and manipulating a graphic file. The second component is a word processor or text processing program and the third component is a web designer or composer program.

Graphic Program

The Gimp is a graphic program that will allow you to create, edit, and manipulate graphics and offers some advanced features. This program does have a learning curve but is a free program available but you are free to make a donation that offers a variety of options including its own proprietary plug-ins available for download. There are many tutorials written for The Gimp that will assist you in learning the program. For website work, I use this program to create my graphic bases for buttons, backgrounds, rulers, and seamless tiles.
Irfanviewer is a free graphics program that views, converts, and manipulates your graphics. This program allows you to use Photoshop and Filter Factory type plug-in filters. If you search the web you will find a variety of free plug-ins to work with this program. Using my bases from THE GIMP, I make my final versions of my buttons, backgrounds, rulers, and seamless tiles. A few plug-ins you might be interested in are a beveler or button maker for making your buttons. A color filter plug-in to allow you to change colors, brightness, saturation, and contrast. A couple of edge plug-ins for creating edges around art work or photos. Tiler plug-in for making seamless background tiles. There is a site called The PLUG-IN SITE that has a very large selection of free plug-ins and information on how to obtain them.

Some Plug-In's For Infranviewer

Button Maker Duo - A free Adobe Photoshop filter that allows for making basic rectangular, square, or circular buttons.
Alfs Power Toys - Offers a free Filter Factory filter called Mirror Bevel (Mirrbevl.8bf) that allows you to make graphics with beveled edges.
SeamlessWorkshop - A freeware Adobe Photoshop filter from RedField Plug-Ins for composing seamless background tiles for websites. This filter is part of the RedfieldPlugin.exe which consists of a total of seven filters. Ripple Magic, Jama 2000, and Lattice XP are demo versions of the paid software. Water Ripple, Jama 3D, Lattice Composer, and Seamless Workshop are all freeware. Using the software installation interface you are free to choose which plug-ins you would like to install.
Alfs Border FX - A free Filter Factory filter that allows you to manipulate edges
Edgeworks - A free Adobe Photoshop filter from Cybia allows you to manipulate edges.
Colorworks - A free Adobe Photoshop filter from Cybia allows you to manipulate colors.

Word Processor

Open Office - A free but you are free to make a donation word processor from Open Office.org that is part of an office suite that can be used for more then just web site work.

Web Composer

Mozilla - A freebut you are free to make a donationn web suite offering a browser, chat, email, and web composer program. This program offers a function to validate html, spell check, and publish your work to a remote site. In Normal mode you can use the program like a simple word processor and print your documents via printer. In HTML Source mode you can view and edit HTML Source along with using Preview mode to see your changes. There is also an HTML Tags viewer for seeing your HTML commands in a graphic rather then text mode that you can also edit and use the Preview mode to see your changes. I use this program to edit, create, correct, and update my website.
NVU- An alternative to Mozilla, this free program is a web composer only program.

After you have all of your programs then it is time to design you graphics, write your text, compose your text and graphics into html pages and publish your website. I usually start with the graphics first and make my layout page without text to create a template that will be cloned for the rest of the website. It is easier to fix mistakes in your template when you are starting out then later when you have much more done and have to backtrack through your pages to find and correct your mistakes. There will be some areas on your website that may require its very own custom web template such as putting up a picture album or download page.

After I have my basic template made, I add some fake text just to see how the overall page format looks and fix any errors before I start writing my text. After the text is written it comes down to putting the text on the pages, checking for errors, making corrections, and then finally publishing the website to the web.

This Yahoo/Geocities website was composed using the tools above along with some additional freeware plug-ins and freeware fonts.

Site Disclaimer:

"User uses all information, files, links etc.. at their own risk for I take no responsibility or liability in anyway."

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