To my Toastmaster friends:

I hope you were intrigued by my speech about website publishing. Here are links to some of the resources I mentioned to help you get started.

• The handy text editor I used to write html code and save files to my web host is Notepad++. It’s truly an amazing program at the truly amazing price of FREE.
• You can learn all about website publishing from the ground up by installing the Apache web server, MySQL database, and PHP scripting language, all  bundled into one easy to install package called a WAMP stack. There are various WAMP stacks available, but the one I have favor is XAMPP. Because you can put the whole thing on a USB drive, I refer to it as the “internet on a stick”. Also FREE.
• If you get to the point of wanting to publish your work live on the internet, there are many hosting options. This site is hosted by Powweb for only a little more than your annual Toastmasters dues.

Remember, it’s all baby steps. Start with the basics and expand your knowledge slowly. There are free web reference to help you. The folks at w3schools have free tutorials for HTML, CSS, PHP, and SQL. Just about every question I have ever had has already been asked and answered at  Stackoverflow. (I usually type my question into Google and am often lead to SO.)

If you have questions, I can try to help. Most of all, have fun!