What do I need in order to build a website?
Making a website can be very easy or very difficult. It depends on exactly what you want. But there are some basic decisions you need to make for any website. We’ll take the questions to ask in order:
- What do I want my site to do?
- Do I need my own domain? My own server?
- Do I want a dynamic or static site?
- How big is my site going to be?
- Will I need special programs (do I need an e-commerce program or a gallery, for instance)?
- What kind of hosting do I need?
- Can I get by with a basic design or do I need something fancy?
- What programs do I need to have to make the site I want?
- What do I need to know to make the site I want?
- How much will it cost me?
All of these questions are connected, with the answers depending on your first answers.
The first question is the most important. If I simply want a small personal site, for instance, I may not even need a domain. This site, bloghouse.net, is a domain, and I own it. Something like mysite.example.com is a subdomain of example.com and the ‘mysite’ is owned by example.com, not by me.
On the other hand, if I am a business and want an e-commerce site where I will be selling products, I certainly should have a domain and an ecommerce program – and if I am a large business, I may even need my own server and my own IP address.
The next posts in this category will look at each question and discuss the various options.
