The first thing you should do is create a folder on your desktop and name it something you will remember like MY WEBSITE. You will be using this folder to collect all your graphics, and text and web pages you are going to create. If it is all in one place then it is not hard to find when you go to send it to the website. Inside the folder MY WEBSITE make a folder and name it images. Into the images folder you will put all the graphics you have prepared for your web site.

The number one tip to help you to build your own web site for free is to get organized. Using my preferred method of post it notes write each section of your web site on a post it note. For example Home, Contact, Products, and Demo might be your main areas of your site. You would have a post it note for each of these sections. If you have other pages you would like to have on the site use another post it and place it under the section it would go into.

Once you have decided on your main sections for your site create a folder for each section inside the MY WEBSITE folder. You're MY WEBSITE folder will now contain a number of folders. There will be images, contact, products and demo if we use the previous example. You do not need to create a folder to represent Home.

So - we'll assume you have now set up your four (or however many!) main areas within your website. Now you have to choose where you are going to put your welcome page (the first "home page" that visitors to your site will see).

The home page will be a file or web page the visitor sees when he types in your domain name. This file which we will name index.html will be the only file in the MY WEBSITE folder the rest of the contents will be folders (images, contact, products and demos from the example). Your MY WEBSITE folder will contain folders with the names of the sections of the site that you have decided upon.

Let's make this a little clearer; you will be creating a mirror site on the Internet to reflect the one you are beginning to create on your own hard drive.

When you start to upload files to your web host so that they can be seen by everyone on the internet you would "open folder for folder" (the left-hand side of your FTP program will show the MY WEBSITE folder, and exactly the same folders on the right-hand-side of your FTP screen (which will be your web host) as you match the construction page by page).

You will already have to "open" your site folder (on the left) to access its contents on screen (whereas the website version [on the right of the FTP screen] will automatically display the contents of the primary folder [whether that is your site-name folder or your "welcome" folder on your own hard drive]). Keeping these two folders the one on your hard drive ?MY WEBSITE? and the folder on the website the same will help keep your site organized and make it easier to Build Your Own Web Site for Free.

This is not as complicated as it may at first sound but you will have the correct structure in place to allow you to stay organized and focused. It is extremely easy to lose your place when you have multiple files, by keeping the mirror folders in place you will always know where you are and the links will all work correctly.

So - now - you have your main site folder constructed, and your sub-folders (for however many areas you chose), and the images folder set up. You have completed the first steps to build your own web site for free.