By Mike Robbins

HTML, Meta tags, DHTML. Have you ever heard of these terms? Does it sound like designing your own Web site will be difficult? Think again. Over the past few years, many different services offered for free on the Internet teach you how to build your own Web site. You don't need any special books or even a fancy education. Look, if my 11-year-old nephew can create a Web site, so can you.

The question to ask yourself is what kind of Web site do you want or need? It's not just about following a trend. There are some legitimate reasons that you could, and in some cases, should, have your own Web site.

If you're looking for a cool place to start making a photo album, forget those plastic sheets, and make an online photo album. This way anyone can see it anytime they want. Another useful Web site idea is to post your resumÈ for potential employers to view. Seeing that you've got a bit of site building knowledge is sure to grab their attention when looking for many jobs.

Now, how do you build that site and make it look like you know what you're doing? You could start by teaching yourself HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language). This is the programming language that computers understand as the basis of Web pages. Now, it sounds like it's difficult to learn, and at times it can be. However, there are numerous Web sites that contain tutorials and help pages to teach you, the beginner, how to start writing in HTML. A few good resources are:

www.htmlgoodies.com

These sites have different styles of teaching you basic HTML, but the main idea is the same since they are geared towards beginners.

You may think this is great, but don't think you'll have the time to teach yourself something new and potentially confusing. To make your life easier, there are HTML builders. They are simple HTML editors that are more visual than textual. You're not typing in code, you're typing in the actual text you want to appear on the site, and then uploading images from your computer or from the site's universal gallery. Most of these sites will have advertisements popping up without your control. Why? This is how you are able to get free Web space. The advertisers pay the Web hosters who offer their free services to you and me. When we create our pages, the advertisers get paid per click. It's a small price to pay for a free Web site.

Here are some great Web hosting sites:

www.Webjump.com is one of the fastest free Web hosters around. With 25 megabytes or megs (file space allotted to you for your Web pages) and a URL (Universal Resource Locator, i.e., a Web site address) that looks like yourname.webjump.com, it is my personal choice to get your site started. It comes with an HTML builder and does pop some ads onto your pages.

www.Tripod.com offers 50 megs of space, has ads and an HTML builder built in. The one thing about them is their ads can be shown on your site in different ways. In particular, you can choose the ads to pop up as opposed to having them placed in your Web pages. Your site's URL will look like this: yourname.tripod.com.

www.Crosswinds.net is a free hoster with no ads and gives you unlimited space to build your site. The one catch, it's slow as molasses in the dead of winter and it has no HTML builder, you're all on your own with this one. Also, your site name is very convoluted, in fact, too much to even type in.

www.FortuneCity.com offers 100 megs of space, puts ads on your site and has a very simple HTML builder. Your site looks similar to the first two in that it's yourname.fortunecity.com.

Now that you have your very own Web site, how do you get a cool name like for your site? For a yearly fee of about $35, you can register whatever available dot-com you want at www.Register.com.

Now you at least know where to begin, so start doing your research and get ready to be on the Web.