How to Make Your Very Own Website Without Paying a Dime As a Kid
Building a website is a great way for children to express themselves, gain experience with web programming and learn e-commerce. There are many resources available to help children create and host their own websites for free. For safety, it is important that the child not include any identification information such as her full name, location, school, church, sports team or other places she frequents.
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Things You'll Need
- Web page editor
- Image editor
- Web template
- Hosting and subdomain
- FTP program
Instructions
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Get a free web page editor. A web page editor will allow you to add text, images and other features to each web page without having to manually write in code for all of these features. There are many web page editors available for free. Some popular programs that are kid-friendly include KompoZer and Nvu (see Resources). Word processing software such as OpenOffice Writer is free to download. A user can create a document, just like in Microsoft Word, but save it as an HTML file that can then be uploaded to the web.
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Create graphics and edit photos for the website with free graphics software. Some free image editing software that are easy for kids to navigate include GIMP and Paint.NET. More professional software such as Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator could be had for free on a trial basis.
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Get a free web template. To simplify things, kids can download an pre-built website template for free. Some popular websites offering free website templates designed to appeal to kids include FreeWebsiteTemplates.com, FreeSiteTemplates.com and FreeFlashTemplates.com/kids_stuff.html.
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Get free hosting and a free sub-domain name. Hosting allows you to upload web pages to an Internet server so they can be displayed on the Web. The sub-domain is the address where users can find the website. A sub-domain is a domain name that comes before the main domain name (e.g., http://mywebsite.0009.com). Many hosting companies offer free sub-domains and hosting like 0009, FreeWebHosting and My3GB (see Resources). A child must register for an account with one of these companies and registration requires an email address. If the child doesn't have an email, an adult will have to register for the account.
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Upload the web pages and other related material such as images, audio and video to the host server. To do this, you will need an FTP (File Transfer Program). There are many available for free, including Coffee Cup Free FTP, Core FTP Lite and FTP Commander. These programs are straightforward and kid-friendly. Just input the user name and hosting account information, sent to you by the hosting company, into the corresponding fields on the FTP program. Then locate and upload files using the browser window.
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References
Resources
- Photo Credit website layout image by 6922Designer from Fotolia.com
