A good fundamental knowledge of HTML can be very helpful for you to design your own website. Once you are clear with the concepts of HTML, you can use HTML editors and tools like Dream weaver, FrontPage and CSS to add spice to your web pages. No other hardware device is needed for you to make your own website. All you need is a standard computer and an Internet connection to upload your web pages. While to design your web site there are few important things that are to be kept in mind.

The first and foremost thing is that make your web pages such that they look tidy and are easy to update. The design of the website should be flexible enough to make changes easily and in a small time. You can use tools like Cascading Style Sheets. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) allows you to create fast loading pages, increase your search engine rankings, and modify your whole site with one style sheet. You can separate your HTML markup, Graphics, text and multimedia from the presentation using CSS.

The second most important point while designing a web page is to keep in mind that the web site should be accessible to as many users as possible. Your web site should be compatible with maximum browsers as well as easily accessible to the millions of users of hand held devices.

Third most important point to keep in mind while designing a web page is to make your website such that it loads quickly. It has been seen that most of the people close your web site if it takes more than 10 seconds to load on a 56k modem. So it is always considered wise to keep your web pages light so that they do not take much time to load. The images on your web pages are the main culprits for making them heavy. Make sure that the images used on your web pages light. Just about all the image editing software available today like Adobe Photoshop, Xara, Macromedia Fireworks have the built in ability to create images that are as light as possible. These programs have special export filters that produce web optimized images. So make a habit to make use these software programs to create lighter web pages. Other than these tools also select the images judiciously for your website. Unless your web page is graphic oriented or is a photo gallery, people will be more interested in the content of the web site rather than heavy images that take hours to load.

The fourth rule for designing a good web site is that make intelligent use of software programs. There are number of software programs such as Flash available to add grace to the web page. But unnecessary use of such software should also be avoided. Do not use software programs like Flash just because it is being used in every other web page.

The last but the most important rule of designing a smart website is to design a website that is search engine friendly and is clear in its message. Properly marked up HTML pages can easily found and properly categorized by search engines.