Designing a website is something fun you can do for your family.  You can create a family scrapbook of sorts, or a site that out-of-state relatives and friends can look on to see what you're up to.  You can post recipes you use often, to access them later (and take up less cabinet space by getting rid of cookbooks and having everything online instead!).  Maybe you have a business idea that would be great if it was marketed on the web.  There are so many different things you can do with web design.

My favorite program for designing websites is Microsoft FrontPage.  There are many web development programs out there to choose from.  I like MS FrontPage because I can see the results of the changes I am making.  You can technically design a webpage in notebook, but only in code--you won't see what it looks like until you post it online. 

It does help to know a little bit of code.  FrontPage makes things pretty easy, but sometimes you can run into troubles and you won't understand what is going on unless you can decipher some code. 

If you want a presence on the web, but have no clue how to create a website, don't want to learn, and don't want to spend the money on software, I suggest starting with a Blog site.  I recommend Blogger, though there are many other sites to choose from. 

Below, you will find some links that might help you in learning how to create a webpage!  (And scroll to the bottom for my web design tips!)

Some of My Tips:

Serious Moms gets about 400 unique visitors a day at this point in time, and here are some thoughts I have to share, based on my experience:

• Make the navigation of the site seem logical. Make things clear, and easy to read, and easy to find.
• Don't clutter the site with a lot of ads.  People don't like ads, especially pop-up ads.  You might be trying to make money off of them, but my opinion is that you'll just lose visitors because of them.
• Make sure to title every single page--Google searches are based on page titles. In FrontPage, go to File, then Properties, and make sure there is a "page title" that defines the page.
• Make your site look professional.  Go to sites you enjoy looking at and copy elements you like about that site (not everything, of course!). My favorite website to watch is Martha Stewart, because the technology and design always seems to be cutting edge and fresh.  One thing you can do is go to the View menu, and then click on "Source," and you can see the code for a particular page.  When I wanted to learn a new technique, I have pasted that code into MS FrontPage (in the split, or code view), and then I have analyzed it. 
• Link to other sites and have your site linked to by other sites!  When I first started Serious Moms, I e-mailed the webmasters of sites that I liked, and asked them to add a link to Serious Moms.  Many sites will do what is called a "link exchange,"  and will post your site if you'll post theirs.  There are also plenty of online directories that are looking for sites to list.  This is a great way to increase the hits on your site, and it also helps search engines find your site.
• Good luck!!!  Web design is really a fun, creative outlet for me.  I hope you will enjoy it as well!