It’s great to have your own personal or business Web page on the Internet. You can fill your personal page with family photos, sounds, events and the like, for all your friends and family to see. For the business owner, Web presence is increasingly the best way to reach potential customers, showcase products or services, provide support and contact information, offer online sales and much more.

In the past, it was necessary to create Web pages by laboriously tagging your document(s), line by line, with HTML (hypertext markup language) code. It’s this code that browsers such as Microsoft Internet Explorer or Firefox use to display a document as a Web page so the page can have colors, graphics, animations and more. But now there are Web creation programs that offer a much easier way to create Web pages, organize them into Web sites and publish them to the Internet, all without having to learn HTML. Here’s a look at one such program:

WebPlus X2 (Serif, www.serif.com, $79.99) is the newest version of a complete Web design studio. The program allows you to create personal Web pages in minutes or more complex Web sites in a minimum amount of time, all with drag-and-drop simplicity. There are three major steps involved in creating your Web site with this program: 1) Design the site with one or many pages, 2) Build the document into a Web site package called a project file, and 3) Publish the Web site to the Internet.

You start by designing your Web page/site, and WebPlus X2 gives you the choice of two ways to accomplish this task:

The quickest way is to use one of 30 included templates by selecting the template that best fits your needs. The templates are categorized for ease of choosing: Family and Personal, Hobbies and Events, Organizations and Clubs and Small Business. Each template has been professionally designed and has a distinctive and impressive look, ranging from strictly business to funky. Next, you’ll likely want to include photos in the placeholder positions. A preview window of the photos in your selected folder helps jog your memory. Select the photo(s), and with a click they are included in your design. For each template, there are also several text placeholders for you to replace with your own text. After you’ve done this, preview your completed work and, if necessary, change anything you want.

You can customize your design directly from the template. Here is where the ease of using this program really shines, since it has the ability to drag-and-drop elements directly from an onscreen selection window. This window can display a variety of elements including photos, clipart and design items such as lines, circles and dividers; it can also display many special effects such as photo borders, frames and much more. Some of the elements are even animated. Photos can be edited for brightness, contrast, size and more and even have frames added.

If you don’t want to use the included templates, WebPlus X2 lets you design your Web page(s) from scratch, and with surprising ease. Start with a blank page, add a background, photos and other visual elements and text as above. You have more flexibility this way, but it requires a bit more work and creativity on your part.

Whichever method you choose, you’ll want to add links to make getting around your Web site easy. A link is a clickable element, such as text or pictures, that take you to another Web page on your site or anywhere else on the Internet. Select any page element, graphic or text and click on the link button to assign the desired link. At this point, you’ll need to save your document in a folder exclusively for that Web project.

Build Your Document Into A Web Site. A simple click adds more pages if you want. If you included dynamic elements such as button roll-overs (changing pictures or text when your cursor points to it) or animations, the program takes care of the details automatically, with no fuss. Now you’re ready to save your Web site, which is automatically put in its own exclusive folder on your hard drive. You can preview your site with your own Internet browser or get ready to publish it directly to the Web.

Publishing Your Web Site Onto The Web. This step requires that you contact your ISP (Internet Service Provider) to get the necessary information to publish your site, using the ISP as host, usually at no extra charge. Once you have all the necessary information, a click on the "Publish" button brings up the Publish Wizard that leads you through the process.

Now you’re on the Web. Want to make changes to your site? Easy. Just make the necessary changes at your computer. Then, using the Publish Wizard, update your site on the Internet.

WebPlus X2 is a feature-rich program that requires a learning curve if you want to use the more advanced features. But be patient and save often as you continue the learning process. And remember that you can start with a simple, easy Web site, consisting of a single page and add to or revise it any time. The program has abundant help, including a very good explanation of Web sites and Web site publishing, and there are also several detailed tutorials.

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