The Beginning

I began building this site back in April of 1995. When I first started, this site was being hosted by Deltanet, a local ISP here in Southern California. In the beginning, I spend countless hours a day working on the site. I didn't want to stop until I had it looking just right(which it never did). Let me tell you, it looked like crap. I didn't have a clue what I was doing. So if you are just getting started or you think your Web site sucks, don't worry...there's still hope. :) You just have to work at it.

Here are two versions of my site when I first began working on this Web site. Check em out. I modified the links on the pages so they won't work, cuz most of them are broken links anyways. The first version is my Web site the way it looked for most of 1995 up until May 1996. And the second version is my site the way it looked for the next couple of months until I came up with the current look and feel. Pretty funny stuff.



• Version 1
  
• Version 2

Finding a Host

As I mentioned, when I first started, I had my Web site hosted with Deltanet, then later moved it to Kaiwan(another local ISP), moved it again to Netvoyage, and then finally settled down with EarthLink. It can be a royal pain to keep moving your site. So you should probably do a little research before you choose a provider to host your site.

Most Internet Service Providers these days provide you with free Web space if you have a dialup account with them. For an ISP near you, check out The List. They have info on over 6,100 Internet Service Providers.

Most providers that offer Web space, will give you a Web address in the form of http://www.domain.com/~username. For example, my Web address with Deltanet was http://www.deltanet.com/~ziggy. If you do not want an address like that, you can always register for your own domain name, like me. Generally only companies or organizations register domain names. Most companies want their address to be in the form of http://www.companyname.com. This looks much more professional and is easier to remember, which is why I choose to register my own domain(arkworld.com).

If you wish to have your own domain name, make sure the Internet Service Provider you choose offers that service. Also beware that there is a $70 fee you have to pay to the Internic to register your domain name. This fee covers the first two years. Each year after that, you will need to pay the Internic $35/year to keep your domain name. This Internic fee is separate from any fees which your Internet Service Provider may charge you for setting up your domain.

HTML

When I first began putting together my site, there were no tools or Web page creators out there so I had to learn HTML(Hyper Text Markup Language). I highly recommend that you do the same(if you don't know it already). Believe me when I say this, HTML is so easy to learn. It looks a lot harder than it actually is. It probably took me a day or two before I knew most of the HTML tags. And trust me, you will have more fun if you learn HTML.

There are tons of books on HTML out there these days. But if you don't want to shell out $20-40 bucks for a book then there are plenty of online resources that teach you how to master HTML. The best one in my opinion is NCSA - A Beginner's Guide to HTML. It covers pretty much everything.

If you decide to learn HTML, you will need a text editor to write your HTML on. The main one I use is Notepad(Windows). If you have a Mac, SimpleText will do. Some text editors pose problems, because when you save the file, it will appened a .txt extension to the end of the file name. HTML files need to have a .html(or .htm) extension. So stick to Notepad or SimpleText. If you have a UNIX shell account, you can always use a UNIX editor such as Pico or Vi. Vi is the one I use when making modifications to my HTML. It's probably one of the most powerful text editors around. However it's not the easiest thing to learn.

If you're a real lazy ass, you can always pick up an Web page editor/creator. They're very easy to use. No need to learn HTML. These programs will create all of the HTML coding for you. However you do not have as much control over your page as you would if you learned HTML...kind of hard to explain but I'm sure anyone who knows HTML inside and out, knows what I mean. Probably the most powerful tool out there is Microsoft FrontPage, but it's not free. I believe you will have to shell out anywhere from $50-100 for it. Other good editors for beginners are HotDog HTML Web editor, Netscape Gold or Communicator, Adobe Pagemill, and Claris Homepage. If you want to find any of these, you can browse the Web or do a search from a search engine. I'm not going to give you any links because I think you should learn HTML on your own. :)

To be honest, I hate these Web editing tools. I've helped countless people who have problems while using these editors which they would not have had if they would have learned HTML. I'm not going to go into depth about this because I can create a whole Web site telling you about all of these problems. These programs are often refered to as WYSIWYG(what you see is what you get) editors. Most of the time, this is not the case. What you see is not what you always get. For example if you are using Microsoft FrontPage to create your Web site, then it is safe to say 'what you see is what you get IF you use MSIE(Microsoft Internet Explorer) to view your Web page'. Same goes for using Netscape Gold or Communicator. I've seen many Web sites that were created in Netscape Gold and look perfect if you view them using Netscape, but they look like different(sometimes drastically different) if you view them using MSIE. So once again, learn HTML!! :)

Graphics

What's a Web site without cool graphics? All successful Web sites have got to have some graphics on them. The graphics and pictures are what catches the visitors' eyes. Now you don't have to overload your site with graphics. Just a few graphics here and there can spice up the look of your site.

All of the photographs on my Web site were scanned on my Microtek ScanMaker E3. This scanner won a lot of awards. If you ask me, it's a great scanner(especially for the price). I think I paid $199 for mine, and that was a year ago. You can probably find them for a lot cheaper now. If you have the money, I definitely recommend buying one. It sure beats stealing picures off everyone else's Web sites. :)

Most of the graphics and pictures on my Web site were either created, modified, or enhanced using Adobe Photoshop. This is far and away the best tool for editing graphics. However it is quite expensive. I believe it retails for about $500. If you do not have the money for it, some alternatives(for PC) are PaintShop Pro or Lview Pro...both available for under $100. You can download demo versions at Tucows. If you're on a Mac, then I can't recommend any alternatives since I am a PC user, but check out the Mac section on Tucows.

For those of you who do have Photoshop, here are the best Photoshop sites:

• Hands On Training by Doc Ozone
• Andy's Art Attack
• the Action Xchange

Animation

As you can probably tell, I don't use much animation on my site. Actually I try to avoid it if I can...unless I can think of a good way to implement it. Although animated images can really enhance the look of your Web site, they can just as easily ruin the look of your Web site if overused. In my opinion 9 sites out of 10 that use animated gifs do not use them in an appealing manner. I'm sure you've seen some sites with the two burning torches at the top of the site...one on each side. This looks pretty tacky and very unoriginal if you ask me. Other sites just overload their site with all sorts of animated gifs. What they don't realize is how slow this makes their site load up. Animated gifs take longer to load than most other images. So my advice is to keep it simple.

The program that I used to use to create animated gifs is called GIF Construction Set. Now I use Ulead's GIF Animator. It's the best one around in my opinion...but it's for Windows only. If you're on a Mac, check out the Mac section on Tucows.

Scripts

Using Perl/CGI scripts is a must for me. I use them on my site for my guestbooks, discussion boards, submit forms, fortune cookie, weekly poll, as well as both greeting card sites. Before you try to implement any, make sure you check with your provider to see if your site supports CGI scripting. If they don't allow you to use them, ask them if they at least have some pre-configured scripts available. The most commonly used CGI scripts are feedback/order forms, guestbooks, and counters.

If your provider does not allow you to use your own scripts, you can still implement a guestbook and counter. Services such as GuestWorld provides free guestbooks for you. This works because the actual guestbook resides on their server. And if you're looking for a free counter, check out the CounterGuide. They have a listing of all the sites that provide you with free counters.

For those who can use scripts, the best sources for scripts online are:

• Matt's Script Archive
• The CGI Resource Index