HTML is simply an acronym that stands for Hyper Text Markup Language. It is simply a file that contains tags that tell a web server what to spit out. You can create a web page in any text editor. This includes notepad. All you have to do is save it with the .html or .htm extension. Well, you need tags in the document as well, but that goes without saying.

Okay, so you know that html is just an acronym. And you know that html pages are simply text documents with tags in them. Now, let me show you the bare bones html structure you need to use:

Everything in brackets is a tag. You have to have opening and closing tags. We use the open tag first and then close it with the slash symbol in front of the tag name, enclosed with brackets. It's the way the markup language works. You have to start and end your pages with the html tag. That just tells the web server, "Here comes my html page." The header tag contains the title of the page, meta tags (we will explain in a later post), etc. The body tag lets the server know that the main part of the page is coming. This can contain text, pictures, tables, etc. We will have to cover that at a later point. But that's really the bare bones for you. We'll also cover some free tools soon.

That's right, we offer a ton of extra stuff, including free web hosting, when you buy or tranfer a domain through us!  This includes:

• Online Photo Filer
• 25MB email account
• Free hosting
• Web Site Builder
• Quick Blogcast
• 100 Pack Email Forwarding
• ETC!

So, why not get started and register a domain name.

Option #1 - Hire a website designer

This road is going to cost you. But, you will be gaining expert consultation and speed. You will offset that most valuable of assets - time. And most people these days are severely lacking in time. And you will get the look and feel that will best express your church. That alone should cause you to pause. But remember - it will cost you a lot of money if done by a good designer.

Option #2 - Get a Volunteer to Donate Their Time & Skill

If you have someone in your congregation who is a designer, maybe they will donate their gifts. Now, let me be very upfront about this. You have to be extremely upfront about your expectations. Both parties need to delineate how much time will be involved, the end result, etc.  First and foremost, you want to protect the relationships of those involved.  I can't underscore that enough.

Option #3 - Utilize an online website builder

A couple of years ago, I would have shied away from this option.  The tools were clunky and very generic.  But now, we have tools that can really provide a lot of help and a lot of power.  This allows you to build a site that is uniquely you without incurring big costs and without jeopardizing relationships.  I try to steer most folks toward this option because it really dovetails most positives well.

We have a great online website builder.  We provide many options, templates, and pricing plans.  We also have a nice product tour that will show you just how it works.  I hope that helps.

1. Step number one is thinking through what you want to do with your site. Do you want a place to put your thoughts out there? Maybe you want a place to post photos of your family and share them with others. Whatever the case, you need to start there. Figure out what you want your website to do.
2. Be honest about your technical ability. Building and administering websites can be an enormous job. If you aren't tech savvy, then you will need tools that bridge that technical divide. Be honest now to save yourself a lot of headache and heartache later.
3. Think through how much maintenance you want to do. As you can see, this list really is a lot like house considerations. Do you want to be updating the site continually or just every once in a while?

That's a good start. More than likely, if you are technically savvy, you can build what you want with some decent upfront planning. If you are not savvy, let me recommend some tools that we have that could really help you:

Website Tonight - This tool allows you to build sites simply, easily, and cheaply. It functions a lot like other desktop applications that you are probably already using like Word and PowerPoint. This allows for a point and click website building experience. Take our Website Tonight Tour. Here are the features included:

Building

• NEW! Click-&-Type Editing
• IMPROVED! Accordion-Style Interface
• Forums
• RSS News & More
• Flash Intros - with Music!
• .mobi-compatible
• Video
• HTML Editing
• Spell Check
• HTML Importing
• Copyright Statement
• Theme-based Categories
• Over 800 Professionally Designed Templates
• CSS Based Templates
• Shared Content
• Password-protected pages
• Professionally Designed Color Schemes
• Color Customizer
• Multiple Color Themes
• Specialty Content
• Site Preview
• Image Editing (editor/wysiwyg)
• Text Editing (wysiwyg)
• Custom Form Builder
• Add Images (Over 8,000 free images included)
• Publish a "Coming Soon" page in 3 easy steps
• Built-in hosting
• Expanded Workspace

Publishing

• Seamless integration with Google's® Site Mapping Tool
• Publishing Times
• Publish From Application
• Add Meta Tags
• Add Page Keywords and Descriptions
• Site Analysis
• Publish Log

Page Elements

• Guestbooks
• Customize and Add Label
• Supports JavaScripts
• Navigation Buttons
• Hit Counter
• Music Plug-in
• Scrolling Marquee
• Date / Time Stamp
• Add Photo Album Links
• Slideshows within Photo Album
• Easy Form Builder

Web Site Management & Tools

• Secure Hosting with Generous Disk Space/Bandwidth
• Spam & Virus-Protected Email Account
• 256-Bit Encryption provides privacy and protection for your personal information through Web-Based Email
• "Phishing" fraud protection with technologies like Sender ID
• Email Forwards
• Faster Backup and Restore
• Rebuild
• Fonts
• Google® AdWords® Credit
• Microsoft® adCenter Credit

Online Photo Filer - If you have friends or family in a distant location, this application can allow you to share you photos in simple and fun way. Store your photos online, share them with friends (with no login!), and have them printed and delivered to your door. Convenient, easy, and fun - those are good combinations. Check out our Online Photo Filer Tour. Features include:

• Login-free photo sharing.
• Purchase options for high-quality prints and T-Shirts, delivered directly to your door!
• Simple, effective photo editing features, including the ability to return images to their original state
• Password Protection for galleries.
• Custom photo slideshows.
• RSS Feeds
• Permalinks to Galleries and Photos
• More than 100 photo gallery themes
• NEW! Display your photos on other Web sites! Create a custom photo badge with your choice of layout, color and more and use the HTML code we provide you to show your photos on other Web sites.
• NEW! Mobile-friendly galleries

If you are planning on doing an online store, that is a whole other ballgame.  We will talk about that another time.  Happy site building!

The advantage of websites is that we can pretty accurately track our visitors. This information is incredibly valuable. Offline companies spend millions and millions of dollars to find out who their customers are, where they come from, etc. You can readily garner some of that information by using a simple statistics tracking program. This will allow you to see how your visitor entered your site. Did they use a search engine? Were they referred by another site? Did they have your site bookmarked? You need to know how people are coming to your site. Next, you can track what the visitor does once they are on your site. You can see where most people drop off your site. You can see how long they stay. That kind of information really is gold. And this also applies for non-commercial sites. Afterall, you built a site for a reason - to get people to read it or come to it.

Here are a few free statistics packages:

StatCounter - This free site offers you a host of very nice features. You can see referrers, entry pages, exit pages, keyword analysis, visitor maps (Google Maps feature), browser-type, etc.

Site Meter - Another good, free program that allows you to see similar types of metrics.

Google Analytics - An incredibly powerful, free program. Google's analytics program is so powerful, we still can't believe that they offer it for free.

Webalizer - "The Webalizer is a fast, free web server log file analysis program. It produces highly detailed, easily configurable usage reports in HTML format, for viewing with a standard web browser. It was written to solve several problems that I had with currently available analysis packages. A vast majority of them were written in Perl or some other scripting language, and took forever to run. Some were not free. Some even produced wrong results, or results that were not in a format I found very useful."

Awstats - "AWStats is a free powerful and featureful tool that generates advanced web, streaming, ftp or mail server statistics, graphically. This log analyzer works as a CGI or from command line and shows you all possible information your log contains, in few graphical web pages. It uses a partial information file to be able to process large log files, often and quickly. It can analyze log files from all major server tools like Apache log files (NCSA combined/XLF/ELF log format or common/CLF log format), WebStar, IIS (W3C log format) and a lot of other web, proxy, wap, streaming servers, mail servers and some ftp servers."

What you will find in the preceding list is that some are log file analyzers and others are tagging systems. They both have their pros and cons. Wikipedia has a nice summary of the advantages of both of these types:

"Advantages of logfile analysis

The main advantages of logfile analysis over page tagging are as follows.

• The web server normally already produces logfiles, so the raw data is already available. To collect data via page tagging requires changes to the website.
• The web server reliably records every transaction it makes. Page tagging relies on the visitors' browsers co-operating, which a certain proportion may not do (for example, if JavaScript is disabled).
• The data is on the company's own servers, and is in a standard, rather than a proprietary, format. This makes it easy for a company to switch programs later, use several different programs, and analyze historical data with a new program. Page tagging solutions involve vendor lock-in.
• Logfiles contain information on visits from search engine spiders. Although these should not be reported as part of the human activity, it is important data for performing search engine optimization.
• Logfiles contain information on failed requests; page tagging only records an event if the page is successfully viewed.

Advantages of page tagging

The main advantages of page tagging over logfile analysis are as follows.

• The JavaScript is automatically run every time the page is loaded. Thus there are fewer worries about caching.
• It is easier to add additional information to the JavaScript, which can then be collected by the remote server. For example, information about the visitors' screen sizes, or the price of the goods they purchased, can be added in this way. With logfile analysis, information not normally collected by the web server can only be recorded by modifying the URL.
• Page tagging can report on events which do not involve a request to the web server, such as interactions within Flash movies.
• The page tagging service manages the process of assigning cookies to visitors; with logfile analysis, the server has to be configured to do this.
• Page tagging is available to companies who do not run their own web servers."

Source Wikipedia Web Analytics