I have a BT internet account (aka a btinternet) which, I have been long told, provides me with some default web space.

Mostly, my web site exists on my home machine: I have a dedicated server running a later version of linux which not only provides me with a voice on the web, but also with the copyright of output. While it is relatively cheap to run off my home broadband connection, it is, of course, subject to power outages (I do have a battery smoothing out short power cuts for both the computer and the router, but that’s really to ensure I don’t have to keep checking everything).

The server does some other work for me too, mostly file serving and backups. The library is pretty cool, but otherwise samjwatkins.com is very self contained.

So, I am wasting the opportunity of the web space provided by my internet service provider. If you have a btinternet account, I suspect you are too.

Thankfully, you can access this space.  It’s not overly straightforward, so here is a simple breakdown.

1. Access the space for your web site files

The content on the btinternet site is managed by a system called FTP and you need a programme to allow you to transfer your files up to the website.

Windows 7 does this fairly neatly as per these instructions.  In this case, you need your email address (without the “@btinternet.com” at the end and your mail password.

Having made this connection, I would recommend naming the connection “my website” but that’s up to you 🙂

2. Make your page

btinternet allows you to publish simple html pages.  These are essentially text files (as produced by notepad) although if you’re a beginner, Microsoft word, will allow you to save any page as a html page.

Your first page (aka your home page) is called index.html.

If we go to word, we can type “Hi there, this is my first web page” and save it to a “HTML” file called index.html – keep an eye on which folder this file exists.

3. Publish your file

At this point, I simply drag the file named “index.html” to the website directory/folder.  For a small file, with a good internet connection, this takes seconds.

4. Updating the site

Because the site uses FTP to manage the files, you can’t edit a file off the server.  All your editing will need to be done “off-line” and then copied up.

But you have a website

this site is web addressable, mine is available from here.  Only you have the password and the whole world can then see your output.  There is a lot of advice out there on how to run your website including using publishing tools such as Front page and CSS.  The world is your oyster, enjoy.