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Did you know that you can make websites using Microsoft Publisher?

I made my first ever web page as a kid using Publisher 2003. It was called "Food.com", and you were supposed to be able to submit recipes to be featured on it. It was never published to the web, but I was convinced it was back then. I used to beg my relatives and friends to visit it, but they never listened to me. I also made an "email" site. The idea was that you'd type a message to send to someone, but it would send to me first so I could forward it onto wheoever you wanted. It doesn't really sound like a good idea now, but I thought it was cool back then.

Even though Microsoft had FrontPage for making websites, they still included this functionality in Publisher. While FrontPage makes you do more of the coding yourself, Publisher made web page making so easy. You didn't have to code anything, all you had to do was drag and drop.

When I checked a few months ago, Publisher had website templates. But for some reason, they're all gone now. I can't find them anywhere.

There used to be some incredibly 2000s looking website templates to use. Even as a kid, I thought they looked really dated. There was even a blank page if you wanted to create your own design. You could add extra pages from various pre set designs. The various pre set pages included a products list, an employees list, and an order form. None of them were designed for personal websites, it was all for businesses.

There wasn't any way to fully customise the HTML, however you could add an element of custom code if you wished. You could also create your own forms with buttons and drop down menus. The only things the buttons could do was the "mailto" command, or function as a hyperlink.

The webpages were saved as HTML files for you to upload to your hosting service. You could also publish it straight from Publisher if you wanted.

It seems that this feature has been mostly removed from the latest version of Publisher. I was going to recommend it as a decent program for beginner website making, until I found out that you can't even make a proper site with it now. You can still save as a HTML file, but since all the page sizes in Publisher are designed for printing, the alignment of everything is off. And it seems you can't even add hyperlinks or buttons anymore! The buttons aren't that important, but without hyperlinks, a website is useless.

If you have Publisher 2013 or older, you should still be able to make a website with it. (If you don't have an older version, you can easily find one online for free... )

Click here to see a sample page I made with the latest version of Publisher. The page is a mess, the Neocities version can't display the Word Art I used, nor can it display the pink gradient background... Since there are no hyperlinks, you'll have to use the back button to return here. Right click and select "view page source" to see the code behind it. It's such a mess!