First things first: before you can begin to contemplate how popular your web page will be, you need to find a host to carry your web page. Now, there are several options available for web pages: personalized URLs, free web-based URLs, and a URL via your internet provider.
Personalized URLs
You've seen them all over the internet, people with pages like cindy.com or sassy.net; people with their own personalized homepage name, or URL. URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator, and it simply means the address of a place on the internet. Perhaps on some of these pages you've been blown away by how beautiful they were, or maybe you just couldn't wait to leave the page. However, the problem with personalized URLs like that is that they cost money, whether with a one-time fee or monthly installments. InterNic, which controls orders for personalized URLs, charges a $70 fee for the first two years to have your domain; and after that charge, you have what your DNS holder (Domain Name System) charges you monthly.
For a first time webpage creator, a personalized homepage just isn't the way to go. It's possible you'll find that you don't particularly like making web pages, in which case you'd be out $70 plus whatever you paid for the monthly surcharges. Also, most hosts require you to FTP (File Transfer Protocol) images and webpages into their server to your page, and that can take a tiny while to learn. Some hosts have file managers much like the free homepages (mentioned next) have, but these are more expensive.
Free Web-Based URL's
The very best thing for a first time webpage maker to do is sign up to get a free web-based homepage. These homepages are hosted by a service that gets it revenue through advertisements that are connected onto a person's homepage. And as of now, there are a huge amount of different services to choose from, some offering up to 25 megabytes free of charge on their pages (which, if you don't understand computer terms, is a lot unless you have a ton of huge graphics).
These free web services are really user-friendly for beginners. Many offer ways to make a webpage quick and easy with an online file manager, as well as numerous other options such as templates (think of them as pre-made web pages; you just supply the information) and unlimited email addresses. Even for those who are knowledgable about HTML coding and write their own pages without templates or easy-page makers can use these services with ease and comfort, with no uploading via FTP necessary.
Unfortunately, there are some disadvantages to these pages. If you've ever visited a page hosted by Geocities or Tripod, you'll notice those annoying little popup windows that appear each time the page opens. These are the way the free servers get their money: through advertising. Some services actually code the advertisement into the page itself, most often at the top of the page. Many people who surf the net absolutely abhor these little advertisements and may avoid pages that are on these free servers. However, for a beginning page there really isn't a better way to go if you just want to get the coding and basics down. The following is a list of free web services that you might look at:
Geocities
Tripod
The Globe
Xoom
Freeservers
Fortune City
There is a list of free webpage services here.
Internet Provider Webpages
If you have a provider that you pay monthly or even yearly for use of the internet through their services, there's a good chance that they will host your website for free. However, these are much like having a personalized URL in that you'd have to FTP the files into the server, with no file manager to allow you to edit and rearrange your files online. Still, this service is usually free and there are no popup ads or banners ingrained on your page.
This tutorial is going to assume that, at this point of time at least, you have decided on one of the free services. Once you've signed up for one of these services, take a few minutes and explore the options. Familiarize yourself with the way things work, how to move things around or get into the editor, or get any number of extra options available to you. When you can find you way around the file manager and other sections, move on to part 2.
Part 2
(coming soon)
