Jorge Garifuna
3/25/06
The five essentials to getting started with a website
To get started with a website you need the following five components:
1. A domain name
2. A hosting account
3. A website design and programming
4. Marketing and promotion
5. Maintenance
1. Domain Registration
• A domain name is the online or internet equivalent of your company name. The domain name is not required to be the same name as your business name, but it helps when it is. Just like you would pay for your business name every year or so, you are expected to renew your domain name on a yearly basis.
• You may register a domain with companies such as:
o Enom.com
o Godaddy.com
o Networksolutions.com
• Prices may vary from free to the low $30s depending on the company and management features
• Generally speaking most registrar companies offer a way for you to point your domain to just about any hosting company by simply changing some settings. These settings are generally known as Domain Name Server or DNS for short. DNS have the format of “dns.server_name.com” and this is provided by your hosting company.
2. Hosting
• Hosting is the online equivalent of your organization office space, provided for you to hold your organization’s website information. Just as you would pay your office/location lease every month, hosting is structured in a similar way, however, you may choose to prepay your hosting for a year or more to eliminate month to month worries. Prepaying the hosting yearly is something that we highly recommend.
• When evaluating a hosting company you may consider the following advantages:
o Faster performance servers
o Higher up-time service
o Excellent customer service
o Lower monthly payment
o Larger hosting space
o Highly configurable extremely compatible with database support and programming environment for your website to be as automated as possible so it remains up-to-date.
• Your hosting company will normally setup your account so that you can access it through a web-based control panel to manage your databases, view traffic logs, setup and check emails and other hosting management operations.
• Your hosting company will always provide you with the correct DNS information so that you can make the appropriate updates on your domain registrar. Occasionally the hosting company may go as far as performing these changes on your behalf.
• Some features to consider when evaluating a hosting company:
o Database support (usually MySQL)
o PHP and/or Perl support for programming
o Over 40 GB of monthly traffic or more depending on your traffic demand
o Over 1 GB of space or depending on your needs
o FREE scripts to get you started rather quickly
• Pricing on hosting may range from zero ($0) to the thousands per month depending on the features.
• You may find reliable hosting service from the following companies:
o Yahoo.com
o
http://hosting.garinet.com
3. Web design and content preparation
• In many cases, some organizations just want their site to be up and running as quickly as possible. To avoid stressful situation and know what to expect, it is a good practice to get educated about what it takes to put up a successful site so that every one involved is very clear of the time and sequences that takes place. Below you will find the details as to how the website content is prepared for your website.
• Analyze and professionally layout each content provides for maximum satisfaction.
• Scanning of each and every component discussed
• Editing of picture of every component
• Manual input of information
• Creating appropriate software to catalog all content, thus making it easier for the visitors to navigate and search the company’s products or services
o During this stage you will need a person or company that understands standard designs and programming concepts so that the website is created as optimal as possible.
o This is the stage where all the applications that will allow you to easily maintain the website should be put on the table for discussion and implementation.
o You may consider the following when evaluating a web development company:
o Track record of business knowledge
o Track record of successful websites
o Track record of experience in your specific field
o Track record of creating automated systems
o You may check the following web development companies for a starting point:
o
http://www.GariDigital.com
o If you are doing this yourself, you may want to have some knowledge of the following software:
o Macromedia Fireworks ($299), Adobe Photoshop ($649), Adobe Illustrator ($499) and/or Macromedia Flash ($699) for visual site design.
o Macromedia Dream weaver ($399) for page HTML layout
o PHP or Perl (about 30-60 days to learn fully) for programming elements that will automate your website
o FTP ($54.95) to transfer files from your local sy
