Mike Spraggett | Blog | So you want to create your own website!

Instructional

Mar 03 2010 23:45:33

So you want to create your own website!
Welcome to my blog on creating a website, it is meant as a guide to help you choose the best method to create the site you want.
Firstly I want to highlight some misguided advice that is often given online.

Stupid Statements & Myths
You can make a fortune online just by having a website
Whilst this can be true for about 1% of sites the odds are that you will make little or no money online unless you have a truly great site. Simply creating a website will not start bringing in revenue unless it has informative, original content and is well marketed.
There are ways that you can monetise your site, for instance selling space for adverts on your site or joining an affiliate program.
If you are selling products then you can make money but then your site becomes an overhead, and you are not making money off the website but actually on the products.

You need to learn lots of complicated programming languages
The most common bit of advice given is a lazy “You need to learn html, css, XML, SQL, C#, VB, PHP, ASP……..” and so on and so forth! This is not strictly true, you can create a website with absolutely no technical skills whatsoever. See the Options section below.

You need to spend a fortune.
Unless you are planning on competing with Google, Amazon, E-Bay, Facebook etc you do not need not spend a fortune on your site. You can run a website for free if you really want to. (Not recommended, see the What you will need Section below)

You need this e-book costing $XXX
Selling e-books is a good way to make money off people who don’t know better. They are seldom worth the metaphorical paper that they are written on.
You can learn all you need to for free!

You need to hire a professional
This can be true but unless your site is to become the public face of your company or you have very complicated requirements or you have to handle financial transaction via your site (and not via paypal etc)
Beyond the fact that you probably don’t need one most “Developers” online use little more than the free tools that are available to you and me or are out to make a fast buck and couldn’t care less about the quality of your site. (That said there are some excellent ones online that offer a fantastic service at reasonable prices, it pays to research properly and not to hand over any money until you are sure they can provide what you want)

What you will need
A domain Name
A domain name is the name that people will use to navigate to your site for instance www.amazon.co.uk, www.hostinguk.net, www.facebook.com. Domain names vary in cost from £2 to unlimited! The domains with country codes e.g. .co.uk are usually cheaper than generic ones with .com or .org

Hosting
You will need someone to host your site for you , by which I mean somewhere that you can save your web site files and make them available online.
The temptation may be for you to try finding free hosting and I think that it is great whilst you are learning but you get what you pay for in this life and free services tend to come with little or no support and you have no SLA’ s or guarantees that your site will be available all the time. Better to pay a small amount and be guaranteed a level of service.
I use Hosting UK and so far they have been great and are also reasonably priced.

Web Site/Content
It kind of goes without saying that you will actually need a website and something to put on it but I said it nonetheless.

Options
Create your own
The most rewarding way to own a website is to create it yourself from scratch but it is also going to mean that you need at least some web development skills.
If you choose to create your own then you have the choice of either hand editing files or using a WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) editors. Personally I use Visual Studio but the vast majority of people use Dreamweaver. In terms of overall functionality Visual Studio offers more by far but most find Dreamweaver easier to use.
If you decide after looking in to the options that Visual Studio is for you then I have written a step by step tutorial on how to create a basic website here.

Use a site Builder
Many hosting providers offer a site builder of some sort or at least some free applications that you can use to create your site easily.
A site builder will typically offer you the choice of several templates and all you have to do is add your content.
The disadvantages of site builders is that you are limited to what the provider offers and there is normally little scope for changes.
You may have to pay extra to use a site builder.

Employ someone to do it
This is obviously going to cost you money, unless you have a willing friend to help! You should be guaranteed a decent visually appealing site if you go for this option.
If you do have to pay then you have some options. You could go to a site such as peopleperhour.com and let people bid to build you a site but there is a risk that you will be getting a noob and ultimately pay for a bad site. Alternatively you could go to a professional and the market rate in the UK seems to be about £100 per page for anything less than 10 pages and about £50 per page thereafter.

Buy an up and running website
This is more relevant to businesses but if you Google “Websites for sale” you should be able to find some.

The Actual Costs
The actual cost of creating and hosting a website are hard to estimate but if you want to create a personal site or blog I would recommend setting aside $100 or £100 (It sucks to be British!) Broken down roughly as below

Hosting Costs = $60
Domain = $20
Misc. = $20 (advertising, hosting extras etc.)

If you want to buy software e.g. Visual Studio or Dreamweaver then I would add another $200 or £200 (Still sucks right!)

Further reading
There are some very good books available on web design and I have and would recommend the following.

SQL Server 2008 Express for Developers
MySQL and Java Developers Guide
Creating Web Graphics for Dummies
ASP.NET XML with C#
ASP.NET 3.5 for Dummies

I don’t have the following but they have great reviews on amazon

Build Your Own Website The Right Way Using HTML & CSS 2nd Edition
Website Essentials: A Guide to Planning, Designing and Managing Your Website
Create Your Own Website (Collins Need to Know?)

Useful websites
www.asp.net
www.w3.org
www.php.net
www.google.com (The most useful of all!)

Labels: Hosting, Website