How to make a website or blog using free on-line options There are many free options for starting a website. Free blogs, like Blogger and Wordpress, free hosting services, plus things like Google Sites which helps you build a site. All of these options have different restrictions and pros and cons, so it all depends on the purpose and audience of your site. BLOGS Blogs are basically a news site, so you write updates (posts) and they appear on the site chronologically. Blogs are great if you just want to keep people informed about your activities and they provide good interaction with your users through comments and the way they network. If you use free blog sites & hosting, like Wordpress or Blogger, you will only be able to choose part of your domain name, so your website address will look like myngo.blogspot.com or mysite.wordpress.com For a customized domain name, you would need to purchase the domain name from somewhere like godaddy.com. Some blog sites will allow to use your purchased url, or you could pay for a fully hosted site (which is not covered in this guide). All blogs and even Google sites, use “What you see is what you get”, or WYSIWYG editors, so you don’t have to know any HTML; when you write your post or page, it’s basically like using a simple text editor or writing an email in yahoo or gmail. However, it is important and very useful to know the very basics of HTML code. If you have problems with the way things are displaying, or images are not appearing, or links don’t work, you should be able to fix them if you know the basics, covered later in this section. Customizing: With free blogging sites, you can customize the look of your blog, so it doesn’t look like everybody else’s. This is mainly done by choosing and modifying themes & templates. There are many themes or templates to choose from on sites like Blogger and Wordpress. Within those themes, you can often modify some elements, such as color schemes and the header image. Important Tips • Creating a header image is important, because it’s usually what users will see first when they come to your site. Dimensions of header images vary a lot, but are usually between 500 & 800 pixels wide, and no more than 200 pixels high. Include your logo and some imagery that represents the work that you do.
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