Building a Website
One of the great things about Ham Radio nowadays, with the advancement of technology, is the ability once you've worked someone on the radio to look them up on the Internet to find out more information about them. www.QRZ.com is the site most used for this and has information on most Hams from around the world but it's up to the individual amateur to put their own information onto such a website. I like to look up a callsign and see a picture of the person I have just worked and hopefully something about their station. This adds greatly to the enjoyment of our Hobby. The next step on from this is to see a website that the operator has made about him/herself, the radios, antennas, family, what it's like where they live etc. It's a free world, so you're able to put just about anything you like on your website within reason. The more interesting the site, the more often people are likely to look at it.
I certainly don't know much about building websites. All I know is what I've taught myself by using a program which enables you to build your own site. (HTML Editor). It's a program by Microsoft called FrontPage which I've had for about 5 years, so I'm sure there are much better and more capable programs available nowadays. The website I have made is very simple by today's standards. It basically consists of a number of pages with text and photos on them showing my Ham Radio station and where it's located.
The point I am trying to make is that you don't need to be a rocket scientist to make your own website. I only have experience with this particular program but have been able to muddle my way through in order to create a website and upload it onto the Internet. However for me, it did take some time to achieve but once you're able to upload your site, I've found that you will want to improve it. It becomes an evolving project where you think of new ideas of how to improve your site and then set about trying to do just that.
So, how do you go about building a website? Well, the easiest thing to do is to have a single page or 'Homepage'. To do that using FrontPage, it's a matter of clicking on 'New Page' and a 'clean white page' appears on the screen. Along the top is a row of commands like: 'File, Edit, View, Insert, Format, Tools' etc. If you want a coloured page other than white, you go to 'Format' and then to 'Background' and change the colour of the page. You can also use a picture taken from the hard drive of your computer as the background to your page. To adjust the colour and/or the type of print, click on Format again and change the 'Font' settings to your liking. If you want the text to be centred rather than starting from the left hand side of the page, you can simply do that with the click of the mouse. As with any new program, it takes a while to become used to the various features.
So for example, you may want to start with a white page and a heading up the top and then some text, maybe your callsign, station details, etc. and then you may wish to place a picture next to it. To do this, make sure you click your cursor in the correct position for the image to appear and then click on 'Insert' and browse your hard drive for the appropriate picture. However, the file size of the image is important if it is going to be put on the Internet. The smaller the file size, the quicker it will be downloaded to computers displaying your site. Most of the photos taken by digital cameras are too large to be put directly onto your page so they need to be 'compressed' to reduce their file size. Use the search engine Google or similar, to find suitable free software with which to do this. I try to keep my images below 40kbytes in size. You can also change the dimensions of the pictures to suit your page also by using free downloaded software.
Sooner or later, you're going to have to deal with the 'Code' (HTML) in order to improve your site. You'll need to learn how to 'cut, copy and paste' but don't be put off by this, take one thing at a time and you'll eventually get there.
Once you're happy with the design of your page and have saved it, you will need to upload it to an FTP Server. Some Service Providers with whom you have your Internet connection, provide free hosting using a homepage address which might be something like 'http://users/billjones/twilight' where 'twilight' is the service provider. At a later date you may wish to purchase a 'Domain' name.
Uploading to a server is quite easy once you get the hang of it of course. I use www.smartFTP.com . By typing in your user name and password and then by dragging and dropping your home page document and images etc. onto the 'Upload page', it will finally be uploaded onto the Internet. Prior to doing this your homepage document will have to be named 'index' or something similar.
For more exposure you can list your homepage with websites that list only Ham Radio sites such as: w5www and hamqsl
To succeed you need to fail first to learn from your mistakes so, with perseverance you'll soon teach yourself the right way to go about things. I've tried to make this article as simple as I can because firstly, I'm not an expert and also I believe the best way to build your own site from my experience is to obtain the appropriate software and have a go.
73 - Rob