CREATE YOUR OWN HOMESCHOOL WEB SITE
"But I don't want to do Web admin," I protested, when a friend urged me to put up a simple website for my local homeschool support group in 1998. In the 7 years following, my simple anyone-can-do-it site received over 50,000 hits, and it sat at the top of Google's ranking for homeschooling in Prince William County VA. I never imagined that would happen--much less, that I would go on to create other, more complicated sites, protesting, "but, I don't want to do Web admin," the whole while.
For a couple of years, I had a continually expanding free homeschool site at Homestead.com, which eventually went to a paid-only service. When the renewal price went too high for my taste, I abandoned the host and gave most of the content to my state homeschool organization, which by then had its own domain, and it needed content.
Next, I started a personal site at Geocities, which offers an easy-to-use "pagewizard" that makes creating pages very simple. At the same time, I ended up completely in charge of my state organization's site for a short time, until a more experienced hand came to my rescue.
After all this reluctant Web admin, I began to toy with the idea of buying a domain and creating a real Web site, but never made the time to follow through. So, when Yahoo (which owns Geocities) vaporized my Geocities site after a bogus complaint against my user ID, the motivation to take the leap suddenly fired up.
Fortunately, I had recently learned that Shawn Hall, a homeschool dad, offers free Web hosting to homeschool families or businesses whose sites include any support or advocacy for homeschooling. Shawn said that, in order to get my free hosting with 12 Point Design, all I had to do was buy a domain and agree to allow ads on my site. He said I'd be able to create a site in no time. Well, it wasn't quite that easy, but it wasn't too difficult, either. I'm not that technically adept, which means that if I can do it, then so can you!
You don't have to learn a lot of scary HTML code in order to get your site running, and you can learn the finer points as you go. Once signed on with 12 Point Design, clients receive detailed instructions on setting up the site, and receive all the support they might need in executing the instructions. I cannot begin to articulate how much assistance and patience Shawn and his wife, Annette, have generously shown me. These homeschool parents work very hard to please all clients, including those with freebie sites like mine--and they have set up the tools and resources to help you make your site a success. One of these supportive tools is Shawn's "Templating Engine," which helps make page set-up much easier than coding it all yourself. As Shawn's materials describe it, with the TE, "the basic layout of the entire site is all controlled by a half-dozen files you will rarely, if ever, need to change." Whew! What a relief!
Best of all, once you have a page set-up that you like, you can easily use it as a template for creating additional pages in short order.
It took me a few days of working off and on to get my site started. While my site is not going to win any awards even in my imagination, it does the job and looks decent, to boot. The site you are looking at is an example of a simple but effective design that can be made without a great deal of work. Give it a try yourself, or give your kids the opportunity to create a site. Once you decide to overcome resistance or fear, you may find, like I did, that Web admin can be interesting and rewarding.
-Shay
DOMAIN NAMES
There are scores of places to buy domain names, and many of the experts recommend GoDaddy, which is inexpensive.
FREE WEB HOSTING
12 Point Design
The free homeschooling offer provides up to 25 mb of space (enough for hundreds of pages) and 1 gb of bandwidth (enough for well over 20,000 page views a month).
The Homeschool Connexion
Offers free, no-ad web hosting for homeschoolers. HTML tutorials available on site.
Teach-at-Home.com
No banner ads, pop-up windows, or 3rd party content. Once you've signed up and logged on, you are taken to a page with a template for you to modify to suit your group. This makes it pretty easy, even for beginners. HTML tutorial available on site at no charge.
YahooGeocities Pagewizards make it easy to set up your site. Free accounts include 3 GB/month data transfer, 15 MB storage, online support. Beware that if Yahoo/Geocities determines that it even "appears" that you may have violated its terms of service--such as if someone files a bogus TOS complaint against you-- your site will be shut down with no notification or recourse.
Express Page
Free homepages with add banners and pop-ups. Extremely easy to use. I recommend you set up an e-mail account as a spam catcher when you use and login on this site.
Fortune City
Banner Ads, Pop-up Ads 25 MB of web space, 3 GB of file transfer, No email accounts, no CGI or ASP, FTP access only, Online support docs only.
OTHER RESOURCES
Building a Support Web Site
This in-depth article, written by Ann Zeise, a very experienced homeschool Web site administrator, covers everything from design to safety to resources to obtaining article contributions for your site.
Homeschool Webmasters E-Mail List
For "newbies" and old hands alike. Ask for suggestions, learn tips, expand your knowledge, and share what you learn.
HTML Tutorial
Learn HTML code & tags interactively by example with the help of this free coding tutorial.
(C) 2005, 2007 Shay Seaborne. Originally published in the August 2005 issue of HEM's Online Newsletter.