1 May 2008 @ 9:08A Mother’s Day Gift Idea

Not sure what to get your Mom, your Wife, your Sister? Does she have a passion for scrapbooking and documenting family memories? The biggest dilemma with scrapbooking is that often only a small handful of people get to see your hard work.  Why not give her the opportunity to make an online scrapbook.

First you will need a web host and domain. I recommend ICDSoft. They are a very reliable, full-featured hosting company who has many hosting plans to choose from. You will also need a domain name to go with that hosting, and ICDSoft can provide that for an extra $5.
ICDSoft Web Hosting with plans starting at $6/month

Once you have a web host, you will need an easy website creation tool such as iWeb (part of iLife, for Mac only). Apple has provided quite a few tutorials to get you started with iWeb, so don’t hesitate to check them out. Since you won’t be putting your site on a .Mac account, you will need to choose “Publish to a Folder…” from the File menu.

Once you have published your webpage to a folder, you will need an FTP client to upload your files to your new web host. There are many good FTP clients out there. Personally I use Cyberduck. Cyberduck is one of the few free, but fully-featured FTP clients available, and is definitely worth any donation that you can give. Another great FTP client is Transmit.

Uploading your page to your host will vary ever so slightly depending on the FTP client you choose. The basic method is, enter your domain name, username, and password in your FTP client, then connect/login to your site. Find the index file for the page you just published to a folder. Grab the index file and all the other files and folders in the same folder, and copy them to the www folder on your web host. Once that upload is complete, you will have published your newly created web page to your very own website.

Useful links:
ICDSoft Web Hosting
iLife with iWeb
Cyberduck or Transmit FTP clients
And if you need a Mac check out this deal

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