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Article Title: 'Creating Your Own Website' Author Name: Dallas Franklin Contact Email Address: mailto:dallas@sellwritingonline.com Category: Website/Marketing Word Count: 930 Copyright Date: ©2002 Dallas Franklin

'Creating Your Own Website' By: Dallas Franklin

A lot of thought and care needs to go into your Website before you actually begin construction. First you must decide on a name for it.

Choosing a Website Name

Don't take this task lightly. You want to have a name that people will easily remember. Often people will use their names, which is good if you're well known. But if you aren't famous yet, chances are searchers aren't going to put your name in search bar. That is unless they're specifically looking for you.

Most traffic to your site will come via search engines. Think like someone who's looking for something on Internet. What search words will they use? How can I incorporate this into my Website name?

It's best to choose names that aren't hyphenated or underscored. This way search engine will pick up all words you've chosen, or any of them. When you break up words it lessens chance of being located.

Registering your Website Name

Probably most reliable and well known places to register your Website Name is at:

http://www.register.com

You can get a two year registered Website Name for approximately $35 per year. Register.com also has a search box so you can enter any combinations of names you're looking at registering. If it's been taken already, they'll let you know. There are other places online where you can find it cheaper and you just have to use your own good judgment if you choose one of these. They're usually offered to anyone who buys their Web Hosting program.

Choosing a Web Host

This can seem like a daunting chore! There are literally thousands of Web Hosting sites available to you. Some are great, some are bad and some are somewhere in between.

Be careful about joining a Web Host that locks you into a year's lease. Many Web Hosting companies will lure you in by offering you great savings when bought in increments like one year. If you purchase their package then remember if you aren't satisfied with their service you're stuck with them legally.

Luckily my last Web Host, who shall remain nameless, was on a month-to-month basis. Since it was my first paid hosting I didn't know if this was norm or not in getting bad service and frustrations galore. I began talking to others who were paying for their hosting services and soon learned I was paying a lot of money for little service.

When designing a web site, you are never sure how it appears to all people. This is because people use different browsers, resolutions, computers and connection speeds to Internet. Your site may look good with your browser, but absolutely horrendous in other browsers. This is why you should test usability of your site, before you expose it to world.

What is usability testing?

This indicates ease with which folks can use your web site. Let’s look at a few usability factors.

Who is winning browser war?

Here are browser statistics: 39% Internet Explorer 6.0 51% Internet Explorer 5.0 2% Internet Explorer 4.0 3% Netscape 4.0

A few years ago Netscape was dominant browser, however Internet Explorer now has 80% of market. With introduction of Netscape 6.0 and 7.0 (their latest release), this may eat a little into IE’s market.

The latest browsers support latest designing technologies, such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS1, CSS2) and XML.

Installing different browsers

Test your web site in different browsers, so your web site can be seen by as many people as possible.

Internet Explorer Download Internet Explorer 5 and 6. The way to do this is to either have each one installed on a different computer, or to have 2 operating systems on your computer. You can do this with partition magic.

Trying to install IE 5 & 6 on same operating sysytem doesn't work. One overrides other.

Netscape Download NN 4.79 and 6.2. You can install them on same operating system as Internet Explorer.

Other browsers The Opera browser This is often known as “third browser” after Internet Explorer and Netscape. It has received international recognition for being faster, smaller and more standards compliant than other browsers.