For an explanation of why you want to do this, and how to determine what your target audience is, send a blank email to websitenewsletter@sendfree.com. That article will also tell you how to harness power of newsletters to bring in traffic.

This is something of a rough overview. If you have specific questions or want to know about something not covered here, write to michaellarocca@lycos.com and I'll try to help.

And finally, since websites that give you free advice on setting up websites tend to come and go rapidly, visit http://free_reads.tripod.com/bookpromo.html for latest version of information contained in this article.

Web Site

Free or registered? Buying your own domain name costs about US$35 A year, and paying someone to host it costs US$20 or less per month. Conventional wisdom has it that free sites don't place as well in search engines, and this is probably true. But if you're just learning, I'd start with a freebie and move it later. If you want a free webpage, you can run a search for "free websites." Here's what every web host should have:

FTP server

Banners, frames or pop-ups? Pop-ups are definitely a no-no, and personally I hate frames

An easy-to-remember address. Some use www.{server}.com/{user} and others use {user}.{server}.com. These are both fine. But something like www.{server}.com/{something}/{something else}/... is just to complicated to transmit verbally, assuming you can remember it.

CGI support, which means nothing to you now but which you'll definitely want down road

If you're looking for some help just getting started, visit Is Your Website Unfriendly? for some excellent pointers and a fine tutorial. It's at http://lbarker.orcon.net.nz/HTMLtips.html.

Also, visit Links To Helpful Sites over on MURDER MUST ADVERTISE. http://www.murdermustadvertise.com/Links.html. The site was set up for mystery writers, but advice is useful to any writer. Heavy on Internet promotion, meaning FREE stuff, but not limited specifically to Internet. Fine tips on writing as well.

You also want to visit two other sites that offers much same thing as this article does but have very different sets of resources.

Internet Authors Network http://www.xenite.org/internet_authors/

FictionHouse Raconteur http://www.fictionhouse.com/html/raconteur.html

If you don't know how to write a website, many of freebie sites give you tools to do it by menu in five minutes. Personally, I hate those. To learn all you need to know, visit:

HTML For The Complete Idiot http://www.geocities.com/hiker_jjw/

HTML Goodies http://htmlgoodies.earthweb.com/

HTML: An Interactive Tutorial for Beginners http://www.davesite.com/webstation/html/

HTML Primer http://www.htmlprimer.com/

The JavaScript Source http://javascript.internet.com/

Web Developers Journal http://www.webdevelopersjournal.com/

Webmonkey http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/

Images are an essential ingredient for Web Site design. You want visitors to have an aesthetically pleasing experience. Properly preparing your images is necessary to enhance appearance of your web site. In Part I of this article I will explain:

When to use images for your web site. What image file formats should you use on Web.

When to use images for your web site - Navigation Graphical buttons can link to other pages or resources.

Image Maps – this is a graphic that contains several links on it. It has several "hot spots" or invisible buttons, you can click on. For example you could have a photograph of your family and put a hot spot on each person's face that links to that person's web site.

Logos and Trademarks – your business or organization's trademark are crucial for name recognition and branding.

Thumbnails – this is a small, "thumbnail-sized version of an image. When you click on it, you jump to another page with a larger version of same image. The visitor can see many different, small images on first page without having to wait for larger files of larger images to load.

What are different image file formats? Web graphics can be categorized into two file formats: bitmap and vector. Bitmap – these are composed of individual values for each color displayed. The larger dimensions of image, larger associated file size will be for same graphic. When viewed with magnification, a bitmap resembles a series of little squares, each of which has a color value that contributes to overall shape. Bitmaps have a very rough appearance when viewed closely but form images when viewed from a distance.

Bitmaps are best suited for photos, drop-shadow effects and soft, glowing or blurry edges.

Vector – these store information about image in mathematical instructions that are then interpreted and displayed.

Vector graphics are best suited for line art, shapes and illustrations.

Image File Formats Graphic file formats used on Web are GIF, JPEG and PNG

Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) GIF is a platform-independent file format that is limited to a display of 256 colors. GIF has been adopted by most developers because of its small file size.