Uploading your site:
Introduction to Domains and FTP Uploading
Once you have created your site, you will want to actually publish it on the internet.
In order to do this you really need a domain name first and formost.
Although you could host your website with only an IP address, it really is advisable to get yourself a domain name - this enables people to find you easily as they only have to type in yourdomainame.com to bring up your site.
The actual companies responsible for regulating the use of domainnames, such as http://www.nominet.org.uk/ and http://www.internic.org will not deal with public requests for domain name registration, so you will need to go through a third party (most commonly a web host provider) such as http://www.1and1.co.uk - they will provide you with a domain name for as little as 2 pounds per year.
After you have purchased your domain name, you need to decide how you are going to host your website - in other words where the actual files will be stored. If you have an internet connection, preferable a fixed IP address, and a little know-how, you can actually host your site on your home computer - which means when people type in your domain name, their browser will send a request directly to your computer for the webpage files - this is compicated and unless you really want to learn about how hosting works, I wouldnt recommend this method.
A far easier way to host your site is to have another company do all this work for you - if possible, use the same company that you registered your domain name with, again I would recomment www.1and1.co.uk. I have been using 1and1 for over 4 years and have NEVER had a problem, they guarantee 99.9% uptime, they have great technical support and, although you can get free hosting if you look around, they are pretty cheap - their basic package starts from 4.99 per month, and on top of that they always have various introductory deals.
Once you have your host you basically have a small percentage of hard drive space waiting for you to upload your webpage files onto. This can sometimes be done using a control panel on your hosting providers site (it can in the case of 1and1) but the way I recommend is via FTP.
For this you will need an FTP client such as filezilla.
The basic settings you will need to use an FTP client are your server address which will normally be your domain name without the www, your username and your password. Once connected to your host via FTP you should see a local file tree and a remote file tree. All you need to do is upload all your webpages from your local machine to the remote server.
A few things to bear in mind when you get to this stage:
Firstly, Most hosting servers will have a standard set of files that will be seen as default home page files - ie the page that will be displayed by default when someone types in your domain name, these files are normally: index.htm, index.html, index.php etc
So its a good idea to call your homepage index.html
Secondly, when you upload your site you need to keep everything in the same structure, for example if you had all your images saved in a folder called images, keep it this way on the server - the reason being is that you have to remember that in your site you have most likely created links to different pages and different files, so when your site is uploaded, these files need to be in the same relative location.
Once you have uploaded your site, type your domain name into your browser and your site should pop up!