Getting your business on the internet right from the start is very important and now considered the most important thing of the many items on the list for getting a business off the ground...

Getting a web site wrong though can be very damaging…

With this in mind it is always better to employ a professional, than to attempt to design build, host and manage your site alone. The trend to use a CMS system is a very exciting area that is now becoming available, this offers a route to keep your site looking fresh and very easy to update yourself, a professional web solutions company can advise you on this.

If you do want to do it from the ground up yourself, it is important for you to understand some basics.

You need your own domain.
Generally, having your own domain creates a much better impression.

Domain names are relatively cheap these days, no more than around $10 a year for a high level domain.

In my experience is best practice to get the host space (for web content and email) separate from domain (domain address) any disputes or bad service with your hosting is then separate over your domain. If you have a dispute with your hosting provider they may lock you out from accessing your domain name. A separate domain provider does need to inform the internet domain system where to find your website information though DNS.

Along with a web address you can have email: some hosting providers will limit email to just a few accounts (e.g. // ' ); document.write( addy34320 ); document.write( '' ); // ]]> sales@mycompany.com // ' ); // ]]> This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it // , // ' ); document.write( addy71749 ); document.write( '' ); // ]]> enquiries@mycomapny.com // ' ); // ]]> This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it // , etc.) which can collect independently of each other.

Depending on your hosting plan you specify an unlimited number of email addresses. If you have several staff with several computers you will need to set up their PC's to receive the email, Microsoft Office, or Outlook is a good option.

There are lots of providers out there (many with in our directory). You want a reliable service but there is no need to pay top dollar to achieve this.

Hosting
Your web site has to reside on a computer somewhere that is connected to the internet. This is the host, it the serves your website pages to the user...

If you plan to use e-commerce and dynamic pages you need to consider the options available. Most hosting companies offer Microsoft or Linux Hosting, If your site is a dynamic database driven solution or CMS, Microsoft offer SQL Server with ASP techniques, while Linux offers, mySql, PHP, Django, Python and many more.


If you do not have your own domain, then your ISP will probably provide email and web space you can use.

Talk to the providers of domain and hosting services on this forum for more information. Click Here.

Web pages
The basis of the web is the humble html page (hypertext mark-up language) or file if you prefer. The http (hypertext transfer protocol) is used by your web browser (e.g. Microsoft Internet Explorer, Firefox - the open source solution, safari, chrome, opera etc.) to communicate with a web server.


HTML is really very simple. It is mostly chunks of text that are enclosed in codes to tell the browser what sort of content is meant to be included. Usually this is static any information displayed will be the same to each and every user.

Dynamic web pages
Sometimes, instead of seeing index.htm or default.html as the filename, you see things like index.php and aboutus.asp. PHP and ASP, these refer to files understood by the web server as computer programmes BEFORE being sent to you. (Web 2.0) This allows, for example, a search to be carried out against a database for you and the results returned as a web page.

Often, when you are looking around a web site, you will find that the address bar in the browser will have things like index.php?business=art&cat=suppliers.

Web standards
A good website is web standards site. The official place for information on this is w3.org although this can be a little hard to digest. Another good source of information (so you know what the web site developers should be doing) is the Web Standards Group.


Accessibility
A key theme in the standards is accessibility and this is supported by legislation in many countries. In the UK it is covered by legislation that came into force in 1999

Spreading the word
There is not much point building a web site if no one finds it. Ensuring that details of the web site appear in all of your postings, emails, letters, leaflets, brochures, adverts, etc. is a good start.

Getting your web site listed in the quality web directories, will be very beneficial. List in related activities and the directories will soon show themselves. Some directories are free; others require a fee (often a basic entry is free but a more prominent or fancy entry costs).

The big search engines such as Google will find your sites through the above types of links. You can also go to most of the engines and submit your site details (often including summary details). Some will only accept submissions on payment of a fee, others ask for a fee to be certain of a listing or to hasten the process.

It is very important that you have quality textual content within your web site also make good use of titles (the details that appear in the border of the web browser) - different, clear and useful titles for each page. Plenty of useful and in context content on every page. Avoid lots of repetition and tricks such as hiding text.

Some search engines give a lot of attention to META tag information on your web pages. This is information that is not displayed by web browsers. It includes key words and site/page descriptions or overviews. These have been abused in the past (putting in popular words that have nothing to do with the site for example) and so the biggest search engines such as Google do not give much attention to them now. They are still worth using though.

Remember that when a search engine looks at your site (spiders it) it is very much like a blind user. The advice given above on keeping content and presentation apart, using clean mark-up and keeping to good structure significantly improves the attractiveness of your site to the search engines.

There is a lot of advice on the web about Search Engine Optimisation - do a search for SEO