WebMastersLoom

Need a website for small business, church, sports team, or community but don’t know where to start? Don’t have the time or maybe even the knowledge on how to build and or publish a website? Well let me say it’s really know big deal. I will try to give you the basics to get started.

Ok let’s get to it. Here are some steps you can follow in no particular order.

-Step one, create some pages.

You probably have heard of “HTML”, html stands for “hypertext markup language”. Hypertext Markup Language is a text-based markup language used for web documents. In HTML, markup indicates page structure. A website can be made up of many “html” files. If you know absolutely nothing about HTML then you’re going to have to do some research or purchase a book. If you’re using a good HTML editor or MS Word then this task is not be so bad. I don’t want to get into the task of coding HTML in this article so you’re going to have to play around with building some practice pages.

About HTML editors

Their are many editors that can be used to create and edit html files. Some free, some costing hundreds of dollars. Since it is a text based language pretty much any text editor will do but I suggjest investing in a good WIZ-zee-wig. (Short for what you see is what you get). My favorite is Macromedia Dreamweaver. If you have Microsoft word then you can save “Word” documents as web pages as well.

Page Types

There are basically two types of web pages, static and dynamic. What’s the difference between a static and dynamic web page? Well it is exactly that, static or dynamic. Static never changes. It basically just text, links and images. Dynamic web page, dynamic HTML or DHTML is a technique of creating interactive web sites by using a combination of the static markup language HTML, a client-side scripting language (such as JavaScript, ASP, PHP) and the style definition language Cascading Style Sheets. I’ll get into JavaScript and Cascading Style Sheets some other time.

-Step two, a name for your website. My favorite!

So you need a name for this website, it’s called a domain name. What is a domain name you ask? A domain name is a unique name that identifies an internet site. The Internet is made up of hundreds of thousands of computers and networks, all with their own domain name or unique address example (www.website.com). It’s as simple as that. You’ll have to find a name that no one else has taken and register it. The typical cost is less then $10 a year. If you are starting an online business it is best to select a name that is representative of the products you’re selling. For example, if you are going to sell potted plants then a name like “potted-plants.com” would be your best choices. Why?, the search engines (Google, Yahoo, etc.) like it.

-Step three, choosing a web host.

A web host is where you will serve your website to the world. You will create your site and upload it to your hosting server. This can be a daunting task if you are new to this kind of thing but before you know it, it will be as simple as pie. Here are few things to consider when searching for a web host.

1. Will this company be around in the long run. There are literally hundreds of web hosting companies out there and they are all pretty much the same.

2. Are they reliable? What’s the point of having a website if users can’t reach it. While we may not fully understand the intricacies of the internet, we want to be assured that our web hosting provider has enough room for growth as well as the expert manpower to take care of all this for us.

3. Is it easy to use? Many web-masters are quit tech-savy, they don’t have a team of programmers on hand to execute thier every desire. Tools like a control panel and website builder can be very important.

4. Value: How does it compare in price to others web hosts with the same features.

-Step four. Welcome to the show.

So now you got some web pages, a domain and a host. Its time to upload the files. Transferring a file or files from the user’s computer to a remote computer (Your Host).

Many HTML editors have upload capabilities built in. There are loads of free FTP (File transfer Protocol) software available.

In conclusion

Building and deploying a website may seem like quit a challenge but with some experience, practice and time along with a little research you can become a great web master. I suggest investing in some good books and a good HTML editor.

Many businesses and companies are finding it hard to build their own websites. Nevertheless, it should not be daunting as they envision it to be. In fact, it’s easy. You just need your basic knowledge in computer, internet, a free HTML editor and space in the web. And off you go with your new web site!

The first thing to do is to plan your objectives. They must be reflected in your web site. You must also think of the visitors. You are making the website for them and not to yourself alone. It must cater to their needs. I mean individual needs.

The next step is to think about the design. This involves layout, colors and content. These elements are crucial since they make up the totality of your web site. Wrong choice of color may result to hard to read content. Because of this, your visitors might be annoyed and switch to another site. The drawback is, you might lose all your visitors. Sure you don’t want it to happen so be extra careful with these elements.

Find a server to publish your site. This is the next thing that you must do. There are sites that offer hosting for free. You can have them if you don’t want to spend a penny. However, if you’re running a business, it is advisable to have your own domain. It may cost you about 70 dollars for two years. Not bad though because your site will be free from pop-ups that the free hosting servers are giving.

Now, you can copy your pages to your chosen server. You need not memorize all the tags and format but you must know about HTML. Though, there are hundreds of WYSIWYG or What You See Is What You Get editors out there, nonetheless, you can create a better site with just your basic knowledge on HTML. Proofread and meticulously examine your site. Is navigation satisfactory? Is the content fulfilling in your own point of view? How about in the point of view of the visitors? How about the graphics? If it is not satisfying, you can redo the pages. If you are fulfilled with the overall appearance and function of your site, then you are ready for the next step - to upload it to your host and promote your site.

After the aforementioned steps, you are now ready to accept visitors. However, it doesn’t stop here for web site is a cycle. It’s not enough to be visited by visitors you must keep them from coming back. To do this, update your site more often to be acquainted with the recent events at the same time to make it more useful so as to cater to everybody’s needs.

There are many reasons you might need to move or rename a page on your site. For example you want to:

• Rename a web-page to improve the keyword content of a URL
• Remove a page altogether but redirect to a completely new page
• Consolidate two or more pages into one page.
• Move a page to a new site.

You could just go ahead and delete the old page(s) but you risk losing visitors in doing so. Search engines typically take days, weeks or even months to pick up removal of pages (depending on your search ranking) and thus you risk having site visitors getting the dreaded 404 message instead of attracting them to your site content. Worse yet, other sites which may have been linking to your old page will now be sending traffic to a dead page. The following code is simple and when placed in the old page will allow automatic redirection to the new site page.

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
“http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd”>
<html>
<head>
<title>PAGE TITLE TO BE REPLACED</title>
<META HTTP-EQUIV=”Refresh”
      CONTENT=”2; URL=http://NEW_PAGE_URL.HTM“>
</head>
<body>
<blockquote>
This page has moved. If your browser doesn’t automatically redirect to
its new location in 5 seconds, click <a href=”http://NEW_PAGE_URL.HTM“>
here</a>.
</blockquote>
</body>
</html>

Simplify replace the “NEW_PAGE_URL.HTM” part with the URL of your page, update the page title and your done. As always, make sure you test your code!

PS. If you like this code sample, please link to our site (http://www.webmastersloom.com). It will be much appreciated.