Building A Better Web Site Through Free Association
How good is free?
The no-cost Internet bandwagon continues to accelerate, with Web sites, Web storage space, Web-based software programs, and Internet service providers offering services completely free of charge.
Some Web sites even let you build your Web site for free, then host it for free as well.
I’ve tested most of the major Web site creation tools that you have to pay for, including Macromedia Dreamweaver, the hottest HTML editor among professional Web designers, and Microsoft FrontPage. FrontPage is the most popular product, but it forces you to use other Microsoft products to take full advantage of it.
I wanted to find out how well the free tools compare with the pay tools. So, using Homestead <http://www.homestead.com>, a free service I had heard and read good things about, I created a Web site for sinus
sufferers called Sinusitis FAQ <https://sinusitis.homestead.com/>.
Like similar services such as GeoCities <https://www.yahoo.com/> and Tripod <https://www.tripod.com/>, Homestead is targeted more to home users than business people. I was thus surprised to find e-commerce tools available. You can, for instance, add a shopping cart to your site and even accept credit-card payments.
Creating a site with Homestead is straightforward. You can start with one of the supplied templates and customize it for your purposes by dragging and dropping elements right onto the page. Among other things, you can add graphics, sound and video; provide chat and polling services; and offer local weather forecasts.
Still, free comes with its limitations. Building a Web site from a Web site is slow going, you have much less control and versatility compared with pay packages, and your site must display a banner ad at the bottom of each page.
Whether you use a service such as Homestead or conventional tools, there are plenty of other free offerings to enhance any type of Web site. Most offer free basic services and pay upgrades; some are supported by ads.
It’s best to resist the temptation to filch material from other sites, easy as it may be. Some sites even offer a wide selection of purloined copyrighted music and art. Stick to the up-and-up and you’ll avoid legal hassles.
ArtToday <http://www.arttoday.com> provides access to more than 40,000 high-quality, fully licensed Web graphics, free of charge. Various levels of pay access offer more clip art as well as photos, fonts and sounds.
Partners in Rhyme <http://www.partnersinrhyme.com> provides a large library of public-domain sound effects and royalty-free background music. The site also includes a helpful audio tutorial.
Page Talk <http://www.pagetalk. com>lets you put a button on your site that visitors can click to hear your voice. You just copy a few lines of HTML to add to your site’s source code, then phone a toll-free number and record a message of 20 seconds or less. It’s totally free.
iSyndicate <http://www.atomz.com> lets you add either a simple or sophisticated search engine to your site and sends you a periodic report of what visitors are searching for. The service is free for sites with fewer than 500 pages.
JavaScript can help make your site more dynamic, and you don’t have to be a programmer to use it. JavaScriptSource <http://javascript.internet.com> offers more than 500 free scripts you can cut and paste into your site’s HTML. Examples include pull-down menus and scrolling messages.
Interactivity is the Internet’s greatest strength, and you can now add it to your Web site, free of charge. Beseen <http://www.spellchecker.net> gives visitors the option of spell checking their messages.
Creating forms that visitors can fill out is no easy matter. Response-O-Matic <https://www.response-o-matic.com/> makes it easy — using a supplied template, you just fill in the blanks. Whenever a visitor completes a form, the service e-mails you the information.
If you’re building a Web site as a storefront, instead of using a service such as Homestead where this is a sideline, you’re better off using a specialized service. Bigstep.com <https://bigstep.com/> provides “wizards” that walk you through the time-consuming process of setting up sophisticated e-commerce features, such as a catalog and reports. The service is free, though you’re charged fees if you accept credit-card payments.
Reid Goldsborough is a syndicated columnist and author of the book Straight Talk About the Information Superhighway. He can be reached at [email protected] or <http://members.home.net/reidgold>.
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