by James Bruton

Created on: December 30, 2006   Last Updated: April 04, 2007

So you want to create a website. You've got Microsoft Office, but not a web design tool like Microsoft Expression Web. All the same, you want to make a site using what you do have. In this article, you'll learn how to create your very own website using Microsoft Word 2003.

The first thing you'll need to do is create a new, blank document. At the bottom left of the window, you'll see a short row of icons. This is where you can select the view. You need to select the one that looks like a square with a small globe in front of it. This is the website editing view.

The first thing you'll need to work on is the layout. Unlike Expression Web, Word isn't able to use CSS for page layouts, so you'll need to set out some tables. It isn't wrong to use tables - it's just that CSS is part of the web standards. The only disadvantage to using tables is that they may appear messed up in some browsers. But in the common browsers like Internet Explorer 7 and Mozilla Firefox 2, they will display correctly.

You might like to make these tables transparent, so that visitors to your site can not see them. To do this, right click anywhere within the table, and select 'Table Properties'. You'll need to change the border width from 1 to 0. If you'd rather, you might like to build the whole site first, and then change the border width. This is useful for if you'd like to see what you're doing easier.

You can insert images to your website in the same way as you would in a standard Word document. Move these about until you've got them where you want. The same goes for text. One thing you must take not of is that not everyone has fonts like Porkys and Symbol. Instead, you should use a font like Verdana or Century Gothic, as these fonts are common and are found on all computers.

Once you've got your page just how you want it, you'll need to save the document. If it's your home page, call it index.htm

And there you have it! You've built a website using Microsoft Word which will work nicely in Internet Explorer 7, Mozilla Firefox 2, and other good web browsers!

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