Have you ever wanted your own web site but don't know how to get started? In this tutorial, we investigate how to setup a free web site with an excellent service, boinc.ch. Boinc will give you a shell account on their UNIX server, emaning that you can login, transfer files, and setup a web site! If you're looking to post a resume or personal page with a minimum of work, or if you're looking to get started with learning HTML, read on! Their server supports the PHP scripting language, so its an excellent place to learn.

Sign Up

The first step is to request an account with boinc.ch. Choose the free shell account option, and make sure you tell them that you are just learning how to make a web page when you request the account - they are partial to students.

Once they have approved your request, you will then receive an email with your account information. From here, the paths diverge: if you are more interested in learning UNIX, then you should download an SSH client like putty and read their UNIX tutorial. If however, you are interested in learning how to make a web page with HTML and/or PHP, read on.

Connect with FTP 

Your next step is to make sure you are able to connect to the server with a file transfer program. My favorite FTP program is FileZilla, and luckily, it's boinc's too! After you have downloaded and installed FileZilla, follow the instructions in their FileZilla tutorial to see if you can connect to their server.

Learn HTML 

Next, read through Evan Goer's excellent HTML tutorials. All of the HTML files you create can be uploaded with FileZilla to the boinc server. For instance, if you create the simple.html in Part I of the tutorial, go ahead and upload it to the boinc server. Then, you can access it at http://users.boinc.ch/username/simple.html  - just make sure you replace username in the URL with your own username. For instance, my page on the boinc server would be http://users.boinc.ch/help2go/simple.html

Next Steps 

In a few days, we'll post some tutorials on learning PHP - please come back then!