This document aims to cover some of the basics for people who are thinking of setting up their own website. It aims to de-mystify some of the terminology behind the components and technologies that form the world wide web. If you are approaching an agency to handle the work for you, reading this document will give you confidence in knowing what they will be talking about when they ask “Have you arranged your own hosting and registered a domain yet?” If you are thinking of building the site yourself then this will be a good starting point.
2. Choosing a Domain Name
Clearly, choosing the descriptive part of your domain name is important. But you also need to choose which type of domain name you should buy. Should it be country-specific, or a more international .com? For a personal homepage or hobby site you may choose to host your site on a free hosting service such as that provided by your ISP (Internet Service Provider). The ISP will probably allow you to create a free domain name but you will generally be restricted as to what this can be since it will usually need to include the ISP’s domain information eg. hosting a free site with geocities may allow you a domain such as www.geocities.yourname.com. The latter option is ok for a personal homepage but for a more professional solution, especially if you are a business intending to market your products/services online, you should consider registering your own domain name. There a lots of other benefits of having your own domain, here’s just a few of them. a) A domain name is your own unique identity and always will be also long has you continue to use that name. It allows you flexibility in that you may change hosts (we will cover hosting later) at any time but people will still be able to find your website using the same web address as before. b) Having your own domain name means you can personalise your email address eg. admin@yourdomain.com rather than promoting someone else eg.admin@geocities.yourdoman.com. c) Your likely to have more traffic to your website with your own domain name because more people will be returning as they can remember your address and because many search directories such as Yahoo only index websites with their own domain name. Does Size Matter?As a general rule, the smaller the better, since it’s easier to brand, easier to remember and it’s harder to misspell. The downside is that a good short domain name is getting harder to come by. Is it easy to remember?Try to get a name that is easy to remember and sounds good, general words are best for this but since these are all gone at this stage, you should look for non general names or combinations of general names which rhyme and sound good together. Relate the name to your businessIf you use keywords which are related to your business industry you will help your search engine ranking. What’s even better is if you can get your actual business name as your domain name, or a name similar to your company name, this way all your off-line branding will pay off online as Internet users should be able to guess your domain name from your business name. Try and avoid similarities with exisitng domainsThis means you should avoid choosing domain names that already have similar counterparts online, if you choose one of these visitors could end up a your competitors site rather than yours because they got confused over the two domain names. Is .COM the best?These dot-com domain names are used by the vast majority of large companies, who have been spending hundreds of millions of dollars on branding the “dot-com” top domain in the minds of web users worldwide. In fact, .com names are so widespread that many people don’t know other domain extensions exist! .com domains can be freely bought or sold by anyone. Now that all the valuable domains have been bought up .com domains are, for the moment, the equivalent of prime real-estate on the Web. Most companies will place a premium on owning a .com name over any other domain extension. Other international domain namesTwo other international top domains, .net and .org, are also popular. .net is officially reserved for network associations such as ISPs, but in practice anyone can register a .net name. .org is supposed to be for non-profit organizations, but again this rule is not enforced and anyone can buy .org names. You should think of .net and .org names as distant cousins to the almighty .com, less desirable certainly but not unbearably so. Anyone can register .net and .org domain names. Some new top level domain names have also been introduced, of which the most important are .biz (another one for businesses) and .info (for information web sites). Again, there are no restrictions on which types of organisations can register these domain names. We took advantage of this opportunity to register “marketing-magic.info”, which also points to this web site. Country-specific domain namesMost countries now have their own top domains, such as .uk for the UK or .fr for France. The rules for buying domain names under each country top domain vary from country to country; always check before you buy! Some countries (such as France) will only allow you to buy a .fr name if you have a physical presence in the country. If you are intending to trade in a particular country, then it is a marketing advantage to own a domain name linked to that country. In the United Kingdom, for example, .co.uk is the most popular domain name extension. Some countries have essentially sold their cyber-rights to enterprising entrepreneurs. For instance, anyone can pick up a .to domain name (Tonga) or a .cc domain name (Cocos (Keeling) Islands) and most people are not even aware that these were intended to be country-level top domains in the first place! A big success story is .tv, which brings a big annual income to the small island nation of Tuvalu. Some companies are selling sub-domains of memorable domain names. For instance, you can buy a sub-domain of .uk.com if you could not get the .uk domain name you wanted. These are NOT official, internationally sanctioned top domains, just companies essentially chopping up their own domain names into smaller pieces. Choices – getting restrictedThe choice of which top domain to register your domain name under depends on availability, on the impression you want to give, and on the reason why you are registering a domain name. Country-level top domains are often firmly associated with that particular country, so if you are working in an international company or organization, you’re better off buying a .com name. However, over 9,000,000 .com names have already been registered, so supply is very tight and you may have to compromise with a .net or .net.ukname. If you do business in one country but you also want to appear as international as possible, reserve both the .com and country-level top domain versions of your new domain name.
3. Website Build and Web Standards
Depending on what you want your website to do the possiblities here are quite numerous. All pages use html [Hypertext Markup Language] to render the necessary information you wish to display in a web browser. If your website is to hold ‘flat’ content ie. text and/or images that does not need to be interactive and/or change frequently then most likely your pages will generally just consist of html with the text in the page. There are other technologies used alongside html to prepare the doucment, notably css [Cascading Style Sheets]. Both html and css are relatively easy to pick up and there are many books and online guides to aid the beginner. However, if you want a stylish and professinal site then you may want to consult a web designer to prepare you some graphic design for your pages and a web developer to construct the html and css. There is often not a clear-cut separation between designers/developers and many individuals/companies can usually offer both to some degree. If you are developing an interactive site eg. ecommerce, online forum, ever-changing content then you will need a more dynamic solution that will use other supporting technologies, as well as html, known as ‘server-side scripting’ or CGI. Examples of these are ASP [Active Server Pages], JSP [Java Server Pages], ColdFusion, Perl, .NET. If you have a grasp of html then you may find that you can pick up ASP quite easily too. If you are not sure then its best to get some advice from a trusted professional before you start. Another reason for consulting a professional designer/developer is that you may want to consider the possibilities of making your website work in several browsers and user agents. For example, the main browsers Netscape and Explorer display pages slightly differently and the code required to display pages on palm tops and web browsers works differently. In order to address problems of proprietary markup there has arisen in recent years a drive to move towards web standards. These standards will ensure that browser vendors and developers work towards a common goal in the future and use standard coding practices for constructing web pages. Learning html and css is one thing, learning the standards is another and is something that is really the realm of the professional. If you are concerned about your pages working well in older legacy browsers as well as being constucted using standards then you will probably want to consult a professional to at least give you some advice. If are aware of these things already then you can call yourself a professional since the majority of the web at the moment does not conform to web standards. You need to weigh up what you can afford and consider who your audience will be. The more devices you intend to make your web application available on the more expensive this becomes eg. if you want to create a WAP site to run a longside your web pages then this will require a separate application. Interactive/dynamic pages will require scripting work as well as basic design and html construction and this will obviously incur more costs. Get several quotes before you commit yourself to paying anyone for their servcies and check out the quality of their work prior to this to try and assess if they can deliver what you have asked for.
4. Copyright
Copyright law is just as applicable on the internet as in print. Content, graphic images, videos are all normally copyrighted. You can normally obtain written permission to use copyrighted work from the author, publisher, agent or license-holder. Copyright NoticeA document or image on the Web does not necessarily require a copyright notice, it is still protected by copyright laws. In protecting your own work, it is always a good idea to have a copyright notice on your page. Uou can add watermarks to images and other copyright information into the image itself using most graphic packages eg. Photoshop. When is it an Infringement?Most common types of infringement on the Web are images being used on Web sites other than the owners. It doesn’t matter if you copy the image to your Web server or point to it on their Web server. If you use an image on your Web site that you didn’t create, you must get permission from the owner. It is also common for the text, HTML, and script elements of a page to be taken and reused. Again, if you have not gotten permission, this is a violation of the owner’s copyright. How Will they Know?Many corporations have programs called “spiders” that will search out images and text on Web pages. If it matches the criteria (same file name, content matches, and other things), they will flag that site for review and it will be reviewed for copyright infringement. These spiders are always surfing the net, and new companies are using them all the time. Another common way to find copyright infringement is by accident or being told about the infringement. Fair UseMany people talk about fair use as if that makes it okay to copy someone else’s work. However, if someone takes you to court over a copyright issue, you have to admit to the infringement, and then claim it is “fair use”. The judge then makes a decision based upon the arguments. If your information is educational then you may be able to claim fair use. However, fair use is nearly always a short excerpt from an article and it is usually attributed to the source. Also, if your use of the excerpt harms the commercial value of the work (along the lines of if they read your article they won’t need to read the original), then your claim of fair use may be nullified. In this sense, if you copy an image to your Web site this cannot be fair use, as there is no reason for your viewers to go to the owner’s site to see the image. When using someone else’s graphics or text on your Web page, I would recommend getting permission. Like I said before, if you are sued for copyright violation, you must admit to the infringement, and then hope that the judge or jury agrees with your arguments. It’s faster and safer to just ask permission. Further information http://webdesign.about.com/library/weekly/aa081700a.htm
5. Hosting
This is the term used to describe the physical computer/s where your website will reside in order to be accessible by internet users, and the associated services this entails. It is something to investigate while building your site. Secure it when you are ready to go live, otherwise it may not be very cost efficient if your site takes a while to build and your hosting is sitting empty. Of course you may want to test your pages on the live server as you build them to address and iron out any configuration differences between your hosting setup and your local development environment. There are many hosting services available and rates vary greatly. If you are not sure what you require, get some advice from your web designer/developer. If you are building the site yourself and you do not have expert advice at your disposal you may find the following checkpoints useful: a) Cost – How much can you afford? Bear in mind that more is not always better, but cheaper hosting plans may not cater for everything you need b) Disk space – How mush disk space are you likely to need? If your site is generally to be text driven with a moderate number of pages (eg. less than 25) then this should be relatively small eg. 50 mb c) Bandwidth – How much traffic is your site likely to receive. We would all hope that our websites will receive a lot of visitors. You will likely accrue additional charges per month for excedding your bandwidth so make sure the hosting package you choose makes a reasonable allowance for this ie. at least 5 Gigabytes of data transfer per month. d) Security – Nobody wants malicious damage to their sites. If you are worried about the integrity of your site then you may want to consider ‘secure’ hosting. Basically, nothing is 100% secure but it is commonly accepted that ‘Windows’ servers are more prone to malicious activity since they are generally easier to ‘hack’ than alternative platforms such as UNIX. Is your data business critical? If so, you may want to consider what security features your hosting package offers. Some packages offer 100% uptime with redundancy ie. your website is mirrored on another server/s which can be used to replace lost content or switched if the host server experiences problems. These features will inflate the cost of your hosting however. If you are engaging ijn ecommerce then you will need to use secure protocols for your transactions. This is to encrypt and protect users credit card and personal details. Check to see what secure features/options your hosting company will provide with your hosting package. e) Databases – If you are serving up dynamic content and perhaps are running a membership scheme then you will probably require a backend storage facility such as a database. See what db options you can use with your hosting. If your site is to be professional then you should not consider Microsoft Access as a db solution since it is relatively insecure. Most common options are SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle. Most ISP’s (Internet Service Providers) include some amount of webspace bundled with their access account. This type of hosting may be sufficient for a personal homepage but larger/professional/corporate sites will probably require a more professional hosting service. Co-location is a form of hosting whereby you build and run the server yourself but it is housed at a managed professional service. This option is usually expensive and is generally for corporate/ecommerce sites. A medium business solution would be to look at some shared server hosting. This is generally the most common form of hosting and involves using a professional hosting company to alot you some web space on a shared server ie. other websites being hosting on the same server. The company will set up your domain name on their DNS (Domain Name Server) to point to your shared web space. There are many of these options available and come in a range of price bands depending on the number of features you require.
6. Maintenance
If you are managing the site yourself you may want to have your developer build administration facilities into the site so that it can be updated remotely via a web browser. If your management is to be quite extensive ie. include the ability to create new pages then you may want to consider a content management system. Both these 2 options willl incur costs dependant on the initial build and/or the cost of the Content Management System. Alternatively, you may choose to use a visual application such as Macromedia Dreamweaver. Such software has the facility to manage and create new web pages and even create dynamic interactive pages. The software and coding has an obvious learning curve for anyone not experienced with html and web scripting eg. ASP, JSP, ColdFusion. Such software usually has inbuilt support for FTP. This is the protocol commonly used for transferring files from your development computer across the net up to the server hosting your website.
7. Promoting Your Website
The first thing to make clear is that simply building your website and putting it live will not get it instant traffic. You won’t get people flocking to your site as soon as you submit to the search engines, submit posts to discussion lists, and all that. You may not see instant gains from it but if you are prepared to do a little research and put some work into promoting your website you will see gains in the long term. The initial promotion effort is the hardest. There are search engines to submit to, banner exchanges to sign up for, signature files to make, lists to post to, and more. The main point is that it isn’t an uphill struggle forever. Once you have built up an initial visitor base your traffic will increase since those initial visitors tell their friends. And they tell their friends. And so on, and so on. This is called word of mouth advertising – it’s one of the best ways to promote your site! Perhaps your main question will be “If I follow the general rules and put some work into promoting my website, how much traffic can I expect?”. This will generally depend on who your target audience is. A site aimed at free online gaming for teenagers, who make up a large proportion of net users, will obviously be more popular than a site which discusses how to go about installing your own boiler. The point is that it is not necessarily the aim to get thousands of visitors, but to get the right ones who are interested in your site, what it ihas to offer, what it sells, what they can contribute. To target your chosen audience you will need to do the following: a) Find similar sites or those that have similar traffic and request reciprocal links b) Prepare your site before submitting it to the search engines. This includes having to optimize the keywords for your specific subject, and not just use keywords that will get you the most traffic. Use your marketing efforts where it’s worthwhile, and get the traffic that counts c) Make your content high quality ie. free, useful, informative, trust building as opposed to: junk articles, product information, personal information about you d) Include rating labels in your site since modern browsers can be set up so that only sites that have ratings can be viewed ie. to block offensive material e) Do some research on meta-tags and keywords and what choose your keywords very carefully since they will reflect your content and help drive the appropriate audience to your website As well as submitting to search engines you may also want to post to newsgroups, join a beer exchange programme, pay for advertising.
Further Information
How to make a website – Toolkit http://www.howtomakewebsites.co.uk/?page_id=6 Tutorial on promotion http://www.apromotionguide.com/ 20 things that should never appear on your website http://www.promotionworld.com/prepare/20things.html Internet Content Rating Association http://www.icra.org/about/ Preparing your site for Search Engine submission http://www.promotionworld.com/se/prepare.html