Everyone's building their own web page, from 14-year-olds producing multimedia extravaganzas in their bedrooms to grandparents putting their family history online. Despite appearances it's dead simple to build your own web page. More than that, its fun, its useful and it makes your life, online and off, that much richer.

Because you Can

When you sign up with an ISP, you'll almost certainly get a few megabytes of free web space along with your Internet connection and email addresses. This web space is where you can put your own web pages on the Net, so you're ready for action as soon as you get your Internet connection sorted out.

If you think learning a little bit of HTML is just too much effort, you can visit sites on the web with extremely nifty automatic web page generators. Decide what you want your page to look like, bang in your profoundest thoughts and it'll appear like magic in front of your eyes.

Information at your Fingertips

A good practical first exercise in web page building is making your own start page. By putting together a page with links to all your favorite sites, you've got all the information you want. Alternatively, you can just upload your browser's bookmark file to the web. That way, you can get at your bookmarks from any other computer, and you can direct other people there, too.

Win Friends

By having your own web page, you're out there on the Net where millions of people can potentially come and knock on your digital door. For the most paranoid among you, getting email from strangers might be a somewhat scary idea. But for the more sociable, it can be great fun. And because birds of a feather flock together, the new people you meet through your new web page are likely to be interested in similar things to you.

Obviously, for people to mail you once they've seen your page, you should try to make it as interesting or unusual as possible. Having a personal web page also helps you stay in contact with friends in far-flung places, because you can upload photos, audio files and even home movies to your web pages for them to enjoy.

Influence People

There are many altruistic souls on the Net who provide buckets of wisdom on virtually any subject for the sheer pleasure of sharing their knowledge. If you're knowledgeable about a certain subject, why not put it on the web?

This is where the Net really comes into its own, because instead of having to go looking for people with similar interests, you'll soon find them coming to you. With the web being the strangely democratic medium it is, you might find you get some big cheeses from your particular field of interest sending you complimentary messages. You'll have scintillating email conversations that might lead to all sorts of things – lifelong pen-pals, a job offer, maybe even marriage.

Keep the Kids Quiet

Chances are your kids will much prefer building a glittering web edifice on the Net to playing with stupid plastic bricks or rusty bits of metal. Not only will making a web page teach them invaluable computer skills in a wholesome and constructive manner, but also it'll help develop their literacy and general knowledge.

A web page for the kids is the digital equivalent of a school painting stuck to the fridge door. It's also a good opportunity to spend time together and bond as you build your own family web page. No doubt the ease with which your children master HTML will be completely humiliating, but that's part of the joy of parenthood, isn't it?

Get a Job

Showing you're savvy with the Internet definitely gets you brownie points at job interviews, especially if you can demonstrate how the Net can be useful to your potential employers. Putting your CV online is a good idea because it means interviewers can get your details directly and you can update it instantly. It's more environmentally friendly too.

Even if a company you want to work for has nothing to do with the Internet, it looks flash to have a web address alongside all the other details on your application. There's also the possibility that someone might trip over your CV and mail you because you fit the bill for a vacancy. On top of that, if you produce a particularly impressive web page, you may eventually wind up landing a job as a webmaster.

Show Someone you Love Them

Sometimes the one you love may not understand why you find the Internet so fascinating. They might even become a victim of the ‘just another minute…' syndrome as you get caught up in the joys of building your own web page, causing all sorts of relationship tension.

Circumnavigate these choppy seas of romance by building an online tribute to the special person in your life. It may sound cheesy, but it's just like making them their own birthday card rather than buying one. Heighten the anticipation by draping a tea-towel over your monitor and then dramatically unveiling your creation at the right moment.

Broadcast Your Life

A really ambitious home page might include a webcam that broadcasts your life to the world. With one of these gizmos perched above your monitor, you can show your good looking face in real time.

No doubt you can think of far more inventive uses than just pulling silly faces, but remember the weirdo rule – you could get some pretty strange mails asking you to do all manner of bizarre things for the voyeuristic pleasure of others.

Become a Rock Star

Waiting to be discovered? Take your musical destiny into your own hands and whack your audio delights up on the web. Downloading and paying for albums directly over the web will soon become commonplace, so you might as well exploit the phenomenon. Having your sonic chunks available to download also makes it dead easy for any talent spotters to work out if you're shaping up to be the next Nirvana or simply playing the spoons – badly.

Get Rich Quick

And finally, the dream so many have chased and so few have managed to fulfill; making a packet out of the Internet. Some say the days of simply having a bookmark list which turns into the web's biggest search engine are over, but there still seems to be room for anyone with a clever idea to make a tidy profit.

Many of the successful sites started off as spare bedroom operations and went supernova. If you've some sort of small business specialist, you might find the Net to be a lucrative new source of income just through advertising yourself on your web page – but really, with so many other things to be doing with your web space, why would you want to try to make money out of it?