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What is a Web site?
A Website is space on a computer where
anyone who subscribes can say "This is me,
this is what I do, or what I am interested
in, what I know, or what I can sell you". An
electronic brochure and source of
information available to the whole world 24
hours a day. Within the website, each screen
of information is called a page. Pages may
contain text, or graphic images, or even
photographs, sound and video. A main feature
are the "links" embedded within a page that
can be clicked with a computer mouse and
which transport viewers to other pages. To
continue with the brochure analogy, you
would normally open a brochure at the front
or the back and browse forwards or backwards
a page at a time. With a website, the user
decides the order they want to see the pages
in by clicking the links that interest them.
This interactivity generates a sense of
ownership and participation in the user,
binding them to the information much more
tightly than a traditional brochure. To
maximize this benefit, it really needs
someone with an understanding of interactive
programming to get the best out of creating
the electronic pages and links that build
the website.
How Does It Work?
First off
you need to decide what you want your URL
name to be (www.yourname.com).
Once you
have the name you like you have to search
for that name on a domain purchase
center
(like GoDaddy.com), if you name is already
taken, you will have to select an
alternate
name. After you have your name purchased you
will then contact a web designer,
or try to
build your own site. Every site has to be
hosted on a Web Server and depending
on the size
of your site and what your site does the
server space needed may vary. Not
all web
designers own servers, really only about 1/4
own servers due to the overwhelming
cost of a
GOOD server. Once your site is on a web
server, you then direct your domain
name you
purchased before to hit the server with your
site pages listed on it.
How Much Does A Site Cost?
Again
depending on how many pages your site will
have and what it will do, is how much
your site
will cost. See the average scale below
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$250.00 - $500.00 Per Page (Basic Pages)
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$10.00 - $30.00 Per Month For Hosting
(without maintenance)
-
$100.00 - $300.00 Setup Fee (This
depends on your web designer)
-
$100.00 - $1000.00 Per Month For Web
Maintenance (depends on the type of
script
your site contains and how many pages
have to be updated).
-
$50.00 - $100.00 Per Hour For Graphics
Design
The old
saying about you get what you pay for is
exactly what is means when it comes
to web
design. You can hire someone to throw you a
site together with poor images and
layout, and
everyone who visits your site will think you
business is the same quality.
Don't be
fooled by designers who use web templates,
this is a VERY big mistake, most
of the
designers who use templates know how to add
text and some graphics THAT'S IT!
If you want
advanced scripting such as ASP, you will
need a designer who knows what
their doing
and is not so much worried about getting
paid but creating a site that will work
for your
needs.
How Do I Edit My Own Site?
If you use
some of these little site generators out on
the market, you can edit your sites
pretty
easy, but with them type of sites you are
limited tremendously what you can make
your site
do, not to mention all the sites look the
same. In order to have a great site you
must have
clean script, graphics, links and correct
sizes of frames, tables and pages.
This is not
just something you can learn over night.
Web development takes time and
PATIENTS,
and unless you designed, and wrote it you
probably won't know how to edit
the site.
If you hire a web designer to create your
site it is BEST to let them update
and
make any
changes, so they can make sure everything is
aligned and is working properly.
How Do People Find My Site? (Very Important)
This is
where a lot of websites fall. You can have
the best looking and best information
in the
world but if people cannot find you, your
site is nothing! You site must be entered
into search
engine databases (such as Google, MSN, Yahoo
etc.) and contain distinctive
keywords
that can be hit when visitors are searching
for a product or service you offer.
There are
several companies out there that will submit
information for you to several
different
search engine companies, but really there
are only a hand full that you need to
worry
about, because most of the others piggy back
off of the major search engine's
database,
for instance if you register with Google,
then there are hundreds of other
search
engines that use the same database info, so
if your in Google, your going to be in
the others.
The way the search engine work is they crawl
your site every so often and look
for
keywords that are embedded in the site,
quality of the links , making sure none of
your
links are
broken, sitemaps, and a few more different
ways that I won't go into but you
should get
the idea. The quality of your site
depends on your ranking of the search also,
this again depends on how the site was
designed and how clean and detailed the
script is, this is another reason not to try
to build or maintain your own site unless
you know what your doing.
Conclusion
The best
sites are not necessarily the best looking,
the purpose of a website is to send
information
to the world, if your site sends your
message the way you want, is clean,
crisp and
readable people will read and visit your
site as long as the above steps were
taken.
Remember the most important thing about
sites are getting our there, search engines
are a vital organ to the internet and if
people cannot find, then you site is a dead
end . Good Luck..
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