You don't need to spend a lot of money on building an attractive fully functioning website. In fact, you don't need to spend any money at all. You can do it FREE if you know what type of programs to look for and where to find them. "How", I here you ask?

I built my website - WHICH TIPSTER? - in May 2005 with the free software programs that came on the cover disc of an internet magazine. Even if you do not buy such magazines you can still freely download many good software programs from several sites, Tucows, for example.

You should look for software programs that are either FREEWARE or for programs that have recently been replaced by a newer version. As the older version tends to be given away free. Avoid SHAREWARE programs and TRIAL VERSIONS as these usually have many important functions disabled not to mention the expiry date.

The single most important software program you need for creating a website is an HTML editor.

There are several types of editor available, I recommend a WYSIWYG editor. If you are not sure which are the best, always read the reviews and ratings given on most download sites. Feel free to try several until you find one that you are comfortable with using.

If you have used Word or a similar Windows based word prcoessing software program to create a letter or memo then you can use an HTML WYSIWYG editor, as it is very similar to word processing in menu functions and interface.

With time, patience and a little determination you may be pleasantly surprised how relatively easy it is to create an attractive fully functioning website with free programs. And you will have the added satisfaction of knowing it did not cost you a single penny.

Article by Ryan Paulin

With the Internet becoming a popular medium for communication, having your own website can be beneficial. You can use your website to advertise your business, share information with other web surfers How do you do that? One way of doing this is to make your own website. There are lots of ways to build a website. You can pay for someone to build a website and get a web host to host your website. At this point you might be wondering how much it would cost you to make a website. But the good news is, you can actually build a website totally free. How is this possible? Let's find out.

The first thing you can do to build a website totally free is to search the websites that offer free web space and web-building tools. Don't go for websites that only offer a free web page since websites are composed of multiple web pages. Also, remember that you won't get your own domain such as www.yourwebsite.com. You can only get your own domain name if you choose a paid web hosting service. What you do get from free web hosts is a special domain from the host's website like www.hostsite.com/yourwebsite. This will be the address that people would enter to visit your website.

There are various websites that offer free website building. One good website is Microsoft's website: office.live.com. All you have to do is to go to the given website and click the "Create a Free website" button. Complete the registration process by entering necessary information. You will need to input information such as Company name and number of employees. After registration, you will be asked to activate your account by checking your email. You simply need to verify your email address. Once you have verified, you may know start building your own website. Microsoft provided you with a tool to make your website easier. You can even finish making one in about 15 minutes.

Another great website that offers free website building is Weebly. Weebly offers not only free website building but also dozens of free web designs. You can even modify the designs and the entirety of your website's layout if you want. Editing the layout of your website is easy with Weebly because they offer a drag & drop website editor. Another great feature which you may like is the "no advertising feature". Most websites that offer free website building forces you to put unwanted advertisements on your website. With Weebly, you don't need to worry about such advertisements. They also included Google AdSense which enables advertising on your website should you choose to enable advertising on your website to earn money. To start making your website through Weebly, all you have to do is to register an account with them and you can now build a website of your own easily.

If you're not satisfied with the features offered by the two websites I've given, you can try looking for other websites through the web. The important thing here is that you get to build a website totally free.

More Build A Website Articles

Article by onlybusiness

One of the advantages of having access to the internet is the vast amount of resources available to you. The internet, due to its very nature, is bursting with freebies and inexpensive options. The shining success of Red Hat Linux is a prime example of what the internet can offer - for free!

Most businesses out there come across various 'free' options when they are ready to have their own website, from web hosting to designing templates and building ecommerce software. How good are these inexpensive options?

It's true that the internet can offer freebies of great value. However, experience suggests that these freebies have limited utility only. As in life, there are no free lunches, even on the internet.

Many web hosting companies offer free web space, free domain names and even offer to build a website for free. However, once you take them up on their offer, you might find yourself in the deep end. Making use of a free host for your website is like building your house on the beach. It's easy and quick, but it might last no longer than the next wave!

Most businesses that offer to build a website for free make money through the backdoor. They offer you an entire package, complete with inexpensive hosting and a number of limited features. Thus far, everything sounds good. After all, you're just starting out and limited bandwidth along with limited security is not really on your radar right away. But, what happens when your business grows and you want a versatile inventory management system? Or, when you want to accept credit card payments along with payments from leading payment processing companies? Or, you want equal accessibility to the dollar and the Yen or the rupee, for that matter? It is at this time that limited features and limited compatibility begin to bite.

Companies that offer to build a website for free offer cookie cutter designs that look shabby and jaded. These templates are available for unlimited downloads, with the result that your ecommerce website looks like a hundred others. With such a website, your business will never stand out among the others.

However, the biggest disadvantage of using the services of those who offer to build a website for free is the compromise you make in terms of valuable services. Such websites will not be optimized for the search engines. Neither will they offer any assistance in assessing and evaluating the results of any fine tuning that you perform. Ecommerce websites have to continually reinvent themselves to answer the growing needs of their expanding clientele. Only careful monitoring and regular introduction of fresh tools can help you keep up with fresh developments in the field of ecommerce.

Accept a free website only if your website is very small, static and quite extraneous to the running of your business. But, if your website aims to accomplish anything big, then, you need to think twice before accepting freebies. In the end, like we said before, there is no free lunch!

Mark Knowles, president and ceo of Pixelsilk, talks about Pixelsilks's latest innovation for webmasters called MultiSite. Pixelsilk is a seo friendly CMS. MultiSite allows you to create and manage multiple websites within the Pixesilk portal. Using MultiSite allows you to access your previous work and use it across multiple sites, in addition to making an exact replica of any site, as many as you need, in less than a minute. Use Pixelsilk's multisite functionality free for 30 days by clicking here: www.pixelsilk.com When you join MultiSite, you also can try Pixelsilk's Copy Site. If you have a website or website template that is the basis for the next website you're going to build, by a single click, Copy Site will make a copy of the entire site and all of the content is replicated in a new website. Pixelsilk's headquarters is based in Bend, Oregon - hub of the search engine optimization industry with a second location in Portland, Oregon. The company has been building corporate Internet software since 1995 and optimizing for search engine optimization since 1997. Pixelsilk is a Microsoft Gold Partner (since 1996) and have memberships and/or affiliations with SEMPO, SEMpdx, SMX, SES and the American Advertising Federation (AAF). Pixelsilk exhibited at SES San Francisco 2011. To learn more about exhibiting at the next SES San Francisco, please visit: www.sessanfrancisco.com

Find More Build A Website Articles

Article by Ryan Paulin

Do you have a story to share? Do you want to make money online? Do you want to communicate with other people online? If your answer is yes to any of these questions, then you need to have your own website. Why? That's because with a website, you can easily share information and stories to other web surfers through blogs. You can even sell products your business offers online. You can talk to others about any topic through forums. You can do all these things by having your own website and best of all you can do it for free. How can you build a website for free? Here's how.

Through other websites, you can build your own website for free! Websites like webs.com and weebly.com offer free web site building tools and free website hosting for your own website. Just go to their website and sign up and you'll instantly get the ability to build a website for free. But before signing up, you must know what features these kinds of websites offer for you. You need to know the features so you can decide which of the many websites that offer free website building you should use.

Weebly.com offers several features that many people can take advantage of. First of all, you can choose a website design from their professionally designed template. This is perfect for people who are finding it hard to create their website's layout. Furthermore, you have the ability to customize the templates to your own taste. You can change the layout's theme color and such. Adding content on your website such as text, photos and videos is also very easy on weebly.com because you can use their drag and drop website editor to put such contents in your website. All you have to do is to simply drag and drop the contents in your website. And unlike other free website building services, weebly.com lets you disable the advertisements so that you no longer need to save space for unnecessary advertisements.

Webs.com's free web building services is also feature-rich. With it, you can also choose a design from their growing number of templates. And with a site designer, you can edit the template's background colors and even add logos and the like. Their Page Editor is also easy to use. You can easily add text, change font size and color, create tables and such with the editor. The editor works like MS Word so if you know how to use it, using the page editor should be a breeze. There's also a calendar feature that lets you add events so to that your visitors can know what, when and where event will happen. You can also add any kinds of widgets, such as polls and news feeds on your website. Webs.com also offers payment collection via Google Checkout or PayPal so that you can start selling your products online.

These two websites offer a lot of features that you would need to build a website for free. Choose any of these websites and start making the website you want.

How to create a website: www.2createawebsite.com My blog for news and updates blog.2createawebsite.com Learn more about Site Build It! www.iwantsbi.com Download my free book on how to build a website www.ThePerfectSiteGuide.com My forum for newbies to chat and ask questions www.websitebabble.com
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Home Page > Internet > Web Design > Examing Free Do It Yourself Website Design

Examing Free Do It Yourself Website Design

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Design it yourself websites are becoming increasingly popular. It is estimated that thousands of businesses use a build it yourself website builder each week. There are many benefits and many drawbacks to designing your own website. If done properly your website has a chance for a decent search engine ranking. If done poorly your website will never get the recognition it deserves and potential customers will not be able to find your business. If customers can't find you on the internet, your website is as valuable as the price you paid for it. So if you choose to design your own business website, do plenty of homework and plan on investing a lot of time in the designing, development, marketing, and maintenance of your website.

Free "Do it Yourself" Websites The Good & The Bad

There are hundreds, if not thousands of companies on the internet that are offering low cost websites that you can build yourself. Essentially what they are offering you is a platform and then send you off and running into the great world of website design. Choosing if this option is right for you can end up hurting your business more than helping it if you make the wrong decision. A simple sentence or overuse of keywords can quickly get your website banned from top search engines. Imagine how little traffic your website would get if your potential customers could not even find you on the internet. If you are the least bit nervous or skeptical about building your website it may be best for you to hire a website designer. If my car blew an engine I might be tempted to work on it myself, but the better result is going to be for me to take that car to the mechanic because that is their specialty. The bottom line is if you feel comfortable building your own website you should make a stab at it. However, for the majority of business owners it is best to hire a website designer.

Having Your Website Published On The Internet Is Not Free

While the platform to design your website is free, there are still multiple costs of the do it yourself packages. First and most commonly are the website hosting fees. It is free to design your website, but acutally making it live on the internet involves website hosting, which doesn't apply to the free website design offer. You can expect to pay anywhere from $10 to upwards of $30 a month for the hosting of your website. So while you may be saving a few hundred dollars up-front by not hiring a website designer, you are still paying for your so called free website package.

Know How To Market A Build it Yourself Website

Now that you have designed your free website the next step is to market the website. There was a famous quote in the movie Field of Dreams "If you build it, they will come", that is not true with website design. If this were 20 years ago, that quote might apply. However, now in 2010 there are millions of websites out there and thousands of them are going to be competing with you for search engine rankings. A search engine ranking is what number the search engine ranks your website. The goal for any new website would be to have a ranking in the top 100 results, which would put you on one of the first ten pages of search engine results. If your website is ranking past page 10, the chances of potential customers finding your website are slim to none. What free website design packages do not offer you is the best way to market your website. For someone who is not familiar with search engine optimization, keyword marketing, meta tags, or content analysis, then chances are your site will be one of the other thousands of websites in your industry that are not ranking in the top 100 results. You may have designed one of the most professional looking sites offered by a free website template design company, but not having a way for your customers to find you could cost you the loss or closure of your business.

Professional Website Design Is More Affordable Than Ever

Hiring a website designer to professionally design your website can run you as little as a few hundred dollars. This is a one time fee to have a professional website custom designed to your business with keyword analysis, search engine optimization, and attention to search engine attractive content. My company, The Website Shack, offers complete custom designed websites for a few hundred dollars and offers one for the most reliable and lowest priced website hosting services in the industry. The benefit of hiring a website designer is that we are trained in building websites to succeed in the search engine rankings. This is our area of specialty whether you have a plumbing business or a dental practice. The professional design and marketing of your website will provide your business with the highest level of visibility, and the ultimate increased success of your business. It wasn't too long ago that companies were charging thousands to have their business website designed. This is an area that was not impacted by inflation, because higher quality designed websites are now available for custom design for just a one time fee of a few hundred dollars. Every day more and more of us are throwing away our paper telephone books and using the internet to resource companies and products. Having your business listed on the internet, regardless of your location or industry could be the only exposure your business gets to potential customers.

Decide What Is Best For You and Your Business

If you are looking to simply have a web presence for your business where quality of design and search engine rankings, then a design it yourself website may be the route for you to go. As we discussed with monthly hosting fees after your free design, there is nothing really free about a free website builder. Hiring a web designer for a few hundred dollars will give your site a more professional look and increased search engine visibility for your business. Also consider hiring a company for your search engine optimization and local internet marketing of you design your own website.

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Dave Lemke is the CEO of The Website Shack, a website design company based in Atlanta, GA. The Website Shack specializes in web design and online advertising for small business owners.

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