The first step to designing a website is to decide what you want your website to do. This may seem like a simple task, but it is really the most important step in creating your place on the web. The function that you want your website to do will determine the type of site back end that you use. In Part 1 of this series on building a website, I will map out the different type of formats that may give you a road map to the direction that you want to take.
Business Information Site – A business Informational site is a small site which gives basic information about a subject or business. This type of website usually contains the business contact information, location, and general information about the business. This type of site does not need to be updated frequently. The creation of this type of site can be done using the templates offered for free by most hosting services. Many web developers will charge lots of money to set up this type of site, there is no need to pay big bucks for an informational site the template creation tools from services such as Netfirms will do it for you. Keep in mind this type of site is very limited. If you want to have more control over your site and room for further expansion a blog is probably the way to go.
Blog Site – Blog sites have evolved from sites used for daily ramblings from writers to rubust web content platforms in the last couple of years. Services such as Blogger.com and WordPress.comoffer tools that allow a person with no experience in web creation the ability to create a professional website with updates, picture albums, videos, message boards, chat portals, e-commerce, and much more. In fact, a WordPress based website can do about anything you need to do on the Internet. Especially, if a person has no experience with websites, I recommend starting with a WordPress based site.
E-Commerce Site – Selling things on the web can be really tricky. There is a lot of money to be made, but there is also lots of competition. My recommendation is to go with a large store service site. A good place to start is Yahoo stores. Yahoo offers a large variety of store options and integrates merchant account services into their stores. As with all my other advice, Yahoo is a good place to start for the person who has little web site experience. Yahoo has a great store back-end that allows users of any level to add new products and process orders.
Although there are many other types of sites out there, most new web developers will start a project that fall into one of these categories, or a combination of two or all three. For a person starting out, the following is my recommendation.
If you want Free, try blogger.com or WordPress.com and play with all the templates to see what you like.
When your ready to get serious, start with the following.
Sign up for Netfirms.com Advantage or higher plan (about $10 per month).
DO NOT pay a lot of money for a URL, it doesn’t matter. The URL Auctions are scams.
Your URL does not determine your google rank, and that is really what matters.
You get 5 free URL’s with Netfirms Sign-up.
Next, load WordPress on your server, don’t worry, it’s easy and free, it’s included with your account (Install is automated)
Play with all the cool themes.
These basic steps will get you started on your adventure. It may seem that I am pushing Netfirms and WordPress hard, but those are the services I use now, after a lot of trial and error. They are also services that are very low priced and allow a user to do their website themselves while maintaining a professional look and feel. Believe me, plenty of professionals use WordPress.
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