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How_to_create_a_website_the_do it yourself_way
| How to create a website; the do-it-yourself way
So you have a product, service or information that you feel the
whole world should know about. But you aren't quite sure how to
tell them? Fortunately, for you it's the 21st century and we
have the internet.
By using this short article as a reference we will have you
creating your own website in a matter of hours.
The first thing you will need is a website. There are many
options for getting a website, some expensive and some are even
free. Depending on whether you are selling a product, service or
providing information will determine which option you should
choose. Personally, I recommend that if you intend on making any
profit from your website that you hire a web design company or
(often far cheaper) a web design freelancer. If you just want to
share some information online then you will be fine doing the
design yourself.
If you are on a tight budget, then you may wish to use the
do-it-yourself methods described below instead of hiring a web
design company. However, once you do make any profit you should
invest the money into a professionally created web site design.
Methods for creating a website
If you are unfamiliar with HTML, you will have to use either an
online website creator or what is called a WYSIWYG (What you see
is what you get) editor. The former option is available with
almost all online hosting companies so I won't go too much into
detail on them. However, I do recommend SiteStudio as one of the
best in this category. SiteStudio is available through nearly
every web hosting company that uses H-Sphere. H-Sphere is a full
featured web hosting control panel (I will go further in detail
in the choosing a web hosting company section).
The later option will give you a lot more flexibility; however
it will cost some money. The flexibility that you will get will
far outweigh the cost in some of the software packages listed
below. Some of the largest benefits include the ability to
easily modify your website, have a unique web-site tailored to
your design requirements, you created it!, and if you do a good
job there really isn't a need for hiring a web designer at a
later date to redo your website.
Here are some of the most popular WYSIWYG editors:
- Macromedia Dreamweaver MX - Adobe GoLive CS - Microsoft
Frontpage
I recommend that you avoid Microsoft Frontpage, while it is easy
to use and fairly popular, it isn't standards compliant. If you
are going to learn how to create a website you should learn how
to do it right.
Choosing a domain name
One of the hardest things you will have to decide, yet almost
more important than any of the others is choosing a domain name.
A domain name is what people will type in the address bar of
their browser to get to your website. For example, google.com,
yahoo.com, amazon.com, and ebay.com are all domain names. If you
will be selling a product, service or if the site is business
related try to stick to a .com or .net top level domain (tld)
extension.
When choosing a hosting company avoid choosing a company that
offers free domain registration with hosting (or do not accept
the free domain registration) because what they often don't tell
you is that you can't transfer the domain to another hosting
company or even that the next years fee due will be a hefty one.
Domains are typically renewed yearly and the pricing ranges from
around $8.00 to $35.00 each year. The cheaper domain services
typically don't offer as many features as the more expensive
ones.
I recommend the following companies for domain registration:
- Register.com - Expensive, but a well featured control panel. -
GoDaddy.com - Cheap, yet full featured. - Enom.com - Also a
cheaper alternative.
I recommend that you avoid Network Solutions, while they are
large and have a big budget they are often criticized for doing
shady things.
Choosing a web hosting company
Now days hosting has become a commodity item. There are
literally tens of thousands of hosting companies, most offering
exactly the same features and most of them perfectly fine for
your new website.
When choosing a hosting company you should try to compare
features, not necessarily price. The end result is to have a
website online with your product, service or information for
everyone to see right? Often the cheaper hosting companies lack
the redundancy required to ensure that your website is available
24/7. If this is a business venture you do not want to miss any
potential customer due to the dreaded 404 error page. However,
if you are just going to be providing information you could
choose a cheaper host as you don't intend on making a profit.
Some of the features you should consider when comparing hosting
companies are:
- Disk Space - This is the physical amount of space that the
host allocates to you for the files that you upload to the
server. - Bandwidth - Bandwidth is the amount of space that you
have available to transfer files from your website to another
end-user of your websites computer. - Windows, Linux or BSD? -
While a user of Windows XP may think it is preferable to use a
windows host, in actuality it really doesn't matter. In-fact a
hosting company that uses windows as a hosting platform
sacrifices themselves a little bit on reliability. Choose a
Linux or BSD hosting provider, they are typically much more
reliable and often cheaper too. - Email accounts - If you're
online you probably already know what an email account is, make
sure you get some with your hosting account. - Control Panel -
Make sure that they offer a control panel. CPanel and H-Sphere
are both popular ones with hosting companies. H-Sphere hosts
will typically be more reliable because it distributes your
website to various application specific servers. Cpanel hosts
typically have everything on one server, so if your websites
down your email is too. - Finally, if you chose to use an online
website creator above for cost or usability reasons; make sure
that the host has an online website creator.
Avoid hosting companies who offer unlimited in any of the above
categories. I recommend and personally use MegaHosters
(http://www.megahosters.com).
If you build it, they will not come - how to promote your new
site
One of the biggest errors many people make is the thought that
all you have to do is build a website and people will come. This
is completely wrong and if you follow this thought it won't be
long before you give up on your new website.
You have to promote it, then promote it some more and once you
think your done doing it twice over, promote it again.
Think of it like this, a website is like a business placed a
half-mile off the freeway, while you may occasionally get
visitors (2-3 times month from type-in traffic) you will never
be successful unless you can move your business closer to the
freeway, promotion does this. Every time you promote your
business you move it a few feet closer to the freeway.
Since there are literally dozens of ways to promote your new
website I will not go in detail on them here, but I will provide
a brief list of some of the more common methods.
- Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising - a very quick way to get
targeted visitors from search engines to your website. - Forums
- Forums are a place that you can go and write with other people
about various subjects. Chose one similar to your website and
participate often. Make sure not to directly post about your
site; but if you provide good information in your posts people
will visit your website. (How will people know what your website
is if you don't tell them about it? Put a link and a short
descriptive text in what is called a signature). - Search
Engines - submit your site to search engines (Manually, one at a
time. Never use the submission tools that submit your site to
dozens, or even hundreds of search engines. Search engines
forbid automated submission tools and may even ban you from
their index - very bad.). - If you're a business put your
website address (or URL) on everything that anyone can see (e.g.
your car, letters, email signatures, business cards, invoices,
packaging, clothing, etc.). - Reciprocal links - find other
website that would compliment yours and offer them a link on
your website in exchange for one on theirs. - If you have
employees, hold a contest with them to see who can get your
website address shown in the most prominent place.
Avoid the following when trying to promote your site as they
will never help (never).
- FFA - Free for all link exchanges - Spamming in any form -
Sending unsolicited emails, posting unrelated messages about
your business in forums, Usenet, or in IRC.
In closing, this overview of how to create a website leaves out
many important details to consider; primarily on the different
promotional methods and on some additional alternatives for each
of the sections. However, it was intended to only address the
essential portions of creating a website.
This article should have helped you to create a website, buy a
domain name and promote the website, all of which are essential
to the success of your website.
Remember you have to promote your website, then promote it some
more and once you think your done doing it twice over, promote
it again. It is the only sure-fire way to ensure that your
website isn't like many of the other millions of websites that
are closed each year because of lack of visitors/sales.
About the author:
Joel Strellner is a freelance web designer
and php programmer
located in Sacramento, CA. You can visit his website at http://www.joelstrellner.com<
/a>. This article and many more are available there too.
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