Webmaster Section: Starting Your Site

Here are some tips on starting a site. I wont tell you to much, I dont want another rival out there. Lol. Well, the first thing you should do is find a good host. For first time webmasters I'd suggest using Angelfire for a few weeks, until you get the hang of HTML. Angelfire doesnt exactly require you to know HTML, and they have a HTML help center. This is were I first started actually learning HTML. On my previous site, I didnt need to know it, so I didnt bother learning it. When I first went to angelfire, I was surprised, cause not everything was just an option pull down that did everything for me. I think that they're HTML help center is MonkeyShed or something like that. To learn HTML I'd go to www.htmlgoodies.com, which is were a lot of people learn.
To have a good site, and to keep visitors coming back, you need a layout. Nobdoy likes a site that is just a bunch of links and some news. You've got to have an organized site, with an easy to navigate layout. Also readable text. Some site, (which i wont mention) have text so small that you cant read it. A good font size is 12 to 14. You can get by with 10 but I wouldnt recommend it.
Your site also needs to have a good color scheme. A very dark site with blue or green text will bomb immediatley (again, no names). If your site is going to have a darker color to it, such as black or dark blue, I'd use white text, or something similiar. Colors is a very important part to a sites success.
Images are another thing. Lot's of sites will have a decent layout, good coloring, and then drop really fast in the ranks of topsites because they have no images. Some sites don't have hundreds of images because of limitations on space. But when a visitor first goes to a site, if they see a crummy layout, with difficult to read text, and bad coloration, they will find the fastest link out of your site.
For beginning sites, a lot of major sites offer a free layout section. These are usually simple but good looking layouts that are easy for beginners to work with. Others are somewhat more complicated. After awhile, you may be able to design your own layout.
After you've gotten better at HTML, and maybe even started to learn something else like CGI, then you can start being on the lookout for another site to host you as a sub-domain. You can get one at Hypermart, Tripod, and most pokemon domains offer sub-domain services.

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