You’ve just put in a lot of time and effort building a fantastic Web site, so now it’s time to share it with your friends or customers and reap the rewards and accolades. The Web Publishing Wizard in Windows® 98 provides an easy way to post your Web site to a remote server where others can access it via the Internet, but there are a few steps you’ll need to take before you can publish your site.

Find a gracious host
If you plan to make your site available on the Web, it is best to find an Internet service provider (ISP) to host your pages. Maybe you’re wondering why not use your own computer to host your site? For one thing, it must be on all the time with a constant connection to the Web to make the page available continuously, and you would need a large computer running special software to handle the number of people who will potentially visit your site.

An ISP provides space on a powerful computer—called a server—that stores your pages and can accommodate thousands of visitors to your site. The ISP also has a full-time, high-bandwidth connection to the Web that allows Internet users to access your site quickly and at any time—day or night.

If you do not want to invest much money getting started, you’ll find a number of places online that offer free Web site hosting, such as MSN. Another good place to look is your current ISP, who most likely offers hosting services for a small monthly fee. If your ISP does not host Web sites, a simple Web search on your favorite search engine will turn up plenty of options, as will a directory of Web hosts. One such directory, the Web Host Directory, lets you search lists of providers by cost or the specific Web technologies a particular service supports.

Be your own dot.com
Next, you’ll need to choose a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) address for your Web site. If you are using a free hosting service, chances are the address of your site will include their Internet domain address, something like: "www.YourFreeHost.com/SectionName/YourPageName.”

If you want the address of your site to be completely your own, you can register your own domain, like www.YourPage.com. There are lots of services that let you search for your desired domain name, such as Microsoft bCentral. bCentral lets you run a domain name search, and register it for a fee if it is available. Make sure the ISP you select to host your pages allows you to use your own URL.

Publish your pages with the Web Publishing Wizard
Now that you have located a host for your site and decided what it will be called, it’s time to publish it. This means copying the pages from your computer to the server that will host them—your ISP’s Internet server. The Web Publishing Wizard automates this process. Before posting pages to a Web server using the Web Publishing Wizard, you’ll need to know the following information about your Internet service provider:

• The Web server name (for example, www.yourprovider.com).
• The posting method used by your ISP, for example HTTP or FTP.
• The user login name and password assigned by your ISP.
• The address (URL) you chose for your pages (for example, http://www.yourname.com).
• The location of your Web pages on the Web server (this is a directory location that will look something like /yourname/www).

Your ISP will help you locate all of this information when you set up your account. If you are publishing on a local intranet at your school or office, ask your system administrator for help.

Once you have gathered the above information, follow these steps to start the Web Publishing Wizard:

1. Click the Start, Programs, Accessories, Internet Tools.
2. Select Web Publishing Wizard. The wizard will guide you step-by-step through the process of publishing your pages.
   Note: If you cannot find the Web Publishing Wizard, see the instructions in the sidebar of this article for how to install it on your computer.

Once you exit the wizard, you are finished! Call your friends and relatives and break out the balloons and cake--your site is now online. A whole world of new friends and avid customers awaits.

Mark Reed was dismayed to learn that the domain name he wanted was already taken.