With 26 letters you can make endless words and a never ending amount of sentences. Emotions can be expressed. Points can be discussed. All from those same letters. When you know what you want to say and where you want to say it next its time to think of how to say it. What tone will you set? Will you write with humour, in essay style or a personal journal. Some people use freeware online such as the weblogs from Blogger to do most of the formatting work on their site. Another good method for making the work simpler is the html editor that comes with the two main web browsers. I like FrontPage Express but you might prefer Netscape's Composer. There are many other html editors around most aren't free.

Before you start to write, look at the basic rules of grammar and punctuation. If there is something you didn't know or have been doing wrong just make a note of it. Learning from your mistakes is all part of being a writer. It seems to be a trend online to forget to use punctuation. It looks sloppy, as if they don't really care about their writing or what they have to say. Writers who value their voice take care of it and want to make a good presentation.

One part of writing that computers and technology have made easier is proofreading. Just use a word processing program to check for spelling, typos and grammar mistakes. You can also find a spellcheck feature in other programs like email. Don't rely on only spellcheck, its a back up for your own proofreading. Spellcheck doesn't catch everything. Its best used to check your writing after you have gone over it yourself.

Once you've written some great content you're ready to load it onto your web space, create a layout and add graphics. Graphics aren't essential but they do add colour, character and interest to the text. Start with a white background and black print or experiment a little. Don't go too far. Text needs to be easy on the eyes and easy to read. You can enlarge and colour titles while leaving the body of your content in plain black and white. These are easy things to do and they don't take much longer to load than the plain text.

Adding graphics is where you need to use caution. You can add small graphics, small in file size not in dimension. Smaller files use fewer pixels and load faster. If you want to use more graphics don't put them on your front/ index page. Let the first page be fast loading and an introduction to your site and a simple index of the contents.

Layout is made fairly simple with the use of tables. Tables are made of cells, rows and columns. These can each be moved around, deleted or added as needed. You may have an html editor which lets you choose from templates where the layout is already set up for you. Unless you want something unusual these templates work well, especially when you are just beginning and have a lot to figure out. If you don't have a template you can look for some online or make one of your own. Pick a website where you like the layout, the way everything is displayed and how the navigation is set up. Then, in your web browser, right click the page and click "View Source". This lets you see the html for that page. Cut and paste this into a text file. Put this html into your html editor and use it like a frame to create your own site and layout. You can even give the site credit for your layout. This could benefit you too, if they link back to you.

Make sure all the links to your content pages work and each page links back to the index or onto the next page of content. Linking pages gives your readers a choice of how they want to navigate your site's content. At the bottom of every page on your website consider having a bar with a short version of the index. Make links to your index, a biography for yourself, a way of contacting you (email address) and whatever else seems relevant or important to you. Navigation is very important. Its worth the time it takes for you to check every link on your pages. Make sure none have a typo which will give readers an error message.

Last of all, load your content to your chosen web space. If you are using one of the big free space providers like Geocities or Tripod this is fairly easy. Instructions are on their site, basically you find the file on your computer and send it to their site. If you are doing things with ftp you will need software for this. If you have a problem help is never too far away on the Internet. Many people will know ftp (file transfer protocol).

So now you are all loaded and ready to go. Your page is online, everything works and it looks pretty great. You'll probably make a few changes here and there, twitch that and move this. There are always small things you notice or second guess as you go along. One thing is still missing, readers!

Next time I'll write about website promotion. Post questions to the message boards. I'll be glad to help