When you've finished editing all your web pages, it's time to publish it to your web server.

If your software has an in-built FTP feature ... use it. If it doesn't, don't worry. You can use WS FTP to accomplish this.

When you're publishing your web site for the first time you will need to find out a few things.

Firstly, you need to find out where to publish your site to. You need to know:

- your FTP server hostname or address.
- your user name
- your password.
- the folder in which you have to publish your site into. Make sure you get this folder correct. If you don't, your site will not be visible on the net.

You should have received all these details when you first signed up with your web host. If you've misplaced this information, just e-mail your web host.

Checking your links

When you've published all the web pages on your web site, you need to check that your links are all working. The last thing you need is for someone to click on your ORDER link and end up with a missing page notice. Some design programs include this feature.

If not included in your software, then you can use a service offered by NetMechanic - HTML Toolbox. You can try this service for free.

Here are some things that HTML Toolbox will report on:

Load Time
The load time will tell you how fast it takes for your webpage to load. Obviously, the faster the better. This is useful to help you fine tune your webpages to increase load time. Try and keep it between 15-20 seconds.

Browser Compatibility
The problems reported here should be minor.

Spell Check
This report could also be misleading. It will probably report your name and address as 'errors' and query different spellings in American/English versions of words. Nevertheless, check and see which words are being reported as an error, just in case you did make a spelling mistake.

That's it! When you've done all this, your web site is live and ready for the World Wide Web.

If you're new to design software, or are unhappy with your current website design company, then be sure to contact us for details of solutions we can provide.