| I often get questions like 'How do you build a fansite' or 'How did you make your site succesfull', so therefor I decided to make this section. This is by no means a recipe for succes or will give you step by step instructions to make a fansite. This is merely a guide with some helping tips. Also this is info from my own experiences; I had no help what so ever when I first started, but you may find some people that could help with your site. Be it graphics, html or just advice.
There are a couple steps to take before starting. It doesn't really matter in which order you take them on. However before you even put your first bits of html on a page, it is very much adviced to follow these first.
Giving a name to your site
Let's start with a fun thing: Finding a name for your site. You may already have one in mind but here are some things to think about.
You have to realize that there are hundreds of fansites on the net already so many names are already taken. For example, you want to call your site. SuperSims. That is an easy to remember name, but if you type in that name in Google, you see that several fansites have this name and the domainname is already taken. This happens alot. Companies 'steal' names that they know will be popular and put ads on them. If you're lucky then you may be able to buy the name, but expect a heavy price.
Some other tips to give:
- Don't make your sitename too long. My site was called 'Snooty's Sim Page'. Not many people will remind that long a name.
- Don't let the name start with "Sim". Not only many sites already have that, if you use another name at the front, it will be remembered easier.
Now let's say, people used to call you Yogi when you were young, because you liked the cartoon. Why not name your site "Yogi Sims". Short name, easy to remember, doesn't exist yet and the domainname. "yogisims.com" is not taken yet.
Learning basic HTML
Yes here is the boring part. Learning HTML is not the most fun thing to do. For building an average looking website, you only need to learn the basics though, and shouldn't be that long to learn. Here are some of the things you should at least learn:
- How to make text another font and color
- How to make links (to other pages on your site and outside links)
- How to post pictures and clickable pictures (enlarging them)
- How to make text bold, italic and underlined
- How to have downloads on your site (zipfiles)
- Changing the background of your site (1 basic color or picture background)
That's about it. Learning to make Tables would really come in handy but is not a priority for a simple page. This may seem quite alot for those that don't know html at all, but you should be able to know all this in a matter of days.
Where do you learn HTML? Well you could buy a book but online are many free tutorials to be found. I used the following website: Pagetutor.com but there are many more. If for example you would like to learn how to post pictures, just type pictures +html +"how to" in Google and you will find the answer right away.
Banner
Before you start building your site, best is to first make a banner. This is what people know your site by, and you should use a good font.
For those that don't know graphics, best is to get Paint Shop pro. it's an easy to use program and you can make some cool banners with it. There is a free trial of about 2 months and that should be enough to make all your site's graphics. If you decide to buy it, it's also not that expensive. Get Paint shop pro here: PSP homepage
Besides Paint shop pro, you really also need some cool fonts (letter types). Search for "free fonts" and download some cool ones.
Let's go back to Yogi Sims. I used the cool font and Paint Shop Pro to make 2 banners for my site:
 
I like the right one better so I will use that one.
Getting a good layout
That is what it's all about. How the page looks and how it's organized. My first site's layout was pretty bad but fortunately soon someone offered me a really cool layout. There are all kinds of programs to make layouts, however, I never used a program like that and can't help with this at all.
There is also the option to write the html from scratch with for example Notepad. You would be surprised how many exellent sites were made by the simple use of it.
However not only will take this alot of time, it also requires alot of skill and knowledge of advanced HTML like tables and such.
Fortunately, you can find many free layouts on the web. Just search for "free layouts" or "free templates" on Google and many sites will pop up. Here is a good one: Free web templates.com
I found a usefull one:
Now before people start complaining, I am totally against guns but this layout is greenish and usable.
Download the template and open the graphics in a paint program. Now you can put in your banner:
Note that this will require some HTML knowledge as you have to change a couple of things in the index.html.
Now it's just a matter of filling in all the other things like links and maybe a picture on the right of the banner to make it more lively.
With just a couple of changes, you can use this one layout page to make all the other pages of your site. It's just a matter of changing some html code around.
On next page:
- Finding a host
- Making your site known
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