- GETTING ON LINE -

Believe it or not, but you can put up your own "professional" web site today for just a few dollars and no setup or monthly hosting charges.  All you need is a web publishing package like "MS FrontPage" (below) discussed in Internet Programs and a site registering and hosting service.   As we speak, I am using FrontPage to try and give you the latest and greatest PC tips via this site of mine.

You can purchase MS FrontPage for about $150, it comes with a very good tutorial and a design 'Wizard' for the new user, and it is compatible with literally all Web hosting services. Publishing your own Web site can be a lot of fun, and the convenient thing about having the site 'based' on your own PC is that you can make daily changes yourself and just hit the 'publish' button to update your site on the Web. Most Internet Service Providers (ISPs) offer you a free web site as part of their service. These are kind of funky, give you a clumsy Web site address, and don't usually support FTP (file transfer protocol) which is the link between your home PC based Web site information and your site itself.

There are a number of very reasonably priced web site hosting services (I've had good luck with www.1and1.com) that provide full FTP support and give you a wide choice of .com, .net, .org, etc. Web site addresses. "1and1" only charges $6 to register your site for a year, and their web site hosting is $1.25 a month including FrontPage support and 500 email addresses.  Need I say more?