Archive for Website Basics
What do I want my site to do?
A website can be anything from a simple, one-page “Here I am world!” site to a huge multi-page site like msn.com or cnn.com.
What a site needs to be depends very much on what you want a site to do.
If you are a business, and just want to be found on the web, you might just put up a small one page site with your logo, address, phone, and the hours you are open. And perhaps a contact form so people could email questions. That kind of a page could use a domain, or could be put on someone else’s city business directory site (even on multiple local directories).
Let’s say you want a site to keep your family in touch. You might want a blog where everyone can post their latest news and pictures. If you’ve got an some photographers in the family, you might want to add a gallery plugin (a plugin or a module is a program add-on) or even a full gallery program. That would require a host and a domain.
What if you want to share your opinions of something (or everything) with the world? A blog is definitely the way to go for that. Or, if you want to start discussions, you could go with either a blog or a forum. Many arguments have been made in favor of each for a discussion based website. I would say the best way to chose between a blog and forum for your own site is to use the one you are most comfortable with.
How about making money online? Well, there you end up with more questions. Advertising can fit on several different types of sites. Blogs, static informational sites, news sites, forums…almost anywhere. If you are selling your own products, you’ll want to have landing pages (pages that are set up to get your customers to buy now). Affiliate income might be best earned through a review site (and a blog is ideal for that).
A business wanting to sell their own products, of course, would need an e-commerce site, with a secure method (or methods) of payment. Quite frankly, an e-commerce site for a large business should be set up by a professional. If you just have one or two products, you can go through Paypal or even set up a storefront with Amazon or Ebay.
A professional artist or musician will need a site that can host their images or audio/video, and possibly an e-commerce site as well.
I’ve probably missed some site types here. Things like social sites and dating sites are also better set up professionally, so won’t be covered here.
But I’m sure I’ve missed something – suggestions are welcome!
Next – do you need a domain?
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.
