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Starting your own website with no money or experience
So you want to start your own website but you don't have anything to do it with. You think you can't afford to buy the software or buy a webhost. You don't need to buy any of these things.
We live in an age of open-source based software. Not many people are aware of this but the average Linux user is.
What if I told you that you could have a free operating system with a free WYSIWYG html web page composer with a free web server with php5 compatibility, so you can host your site from your pc with free web browsers and a free database tool. You would probably think I was lying, but I can assure you this is all true.
Operating System
Free Operating Systems have been around for years now but some weren't really up to scratch. We've all heard of Linux but not all of us have delved in to that world.
Although their will be plenty of disagreement with this choice, we recommend Ubuntu Linux as the Operating System of choice especially if you are migrating from Windoz.
We recommend you get Ubuntu so that you can fulfil this guide to it's full.
WYSIWYG Html Editor
Now hopefully you will have Ubuntu installed. If you do, you don't need me to tell how much software that comes with it.
Open Synaptic Manager and search for Kompozer. Kompozer is a free open-sourced WYSIWYG Html creator.
You can use this to create your websites. Kompozer is available in other systems not just Linux flavours.
LAMP Server
Also from Synaptic, you can install what is called a LAMP server. LAMP stands for Linux Apache MySQL PHP.
By now you should know what Linux is, Apache is a web server so you can host your websites from it, MySQL is a database which you can use to store data and PHP is an internet programming language.
Don't worry though because you don't need to know how to use them all, you just need to install them. Search separately for Apache, MySQL and PHP. Install the newest stable versions for each. Each of these are well documented so if you get stuck you can refer to the manuals.
Website Tools
If you do want to create a database for your site you can install a MySQL Admin tool called PhpMyAdmin. For a full guide on installation and setup click here.
Also, you could, if you wanted to ,utilise a ready made forum called PhpBB. This is also free. For installation and setup click here.
Web Browser
Ubuntu comes with a choice of different Web Browsers. We recommend Firefox. To read about Firefox click here or to get it click here. Firefox is available for most operating systems.
Testing
Now you are using Linux to create your websites you will have to test them for other operating systems. You can install Internet Explorer in Linux to test your site, read this for more info on that. Remember to test your site with both Firefox and IE.
Remember
All the software and stuff recommended on this page comes with a lot of documentation. Check out their sites for more information.
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