A Practical Guide To Websites For Small Local Businesses

Building A Website From Scratch

If you are going to build a website on your own you have two options:

1. learn HTML
2. use WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) software

The obvious advantage of using WYSIWYG software is that you do not need to learn HTML. The main disadvantage is the price. MicroSoft FrontPage (the most popular) currently costs US$169.00 and Macromedia's Dreamweaver (popular among professional web designers) costs US$299.00! There are a number of cheap shareware programs available, but the ones I have tried just did not cut it.

An excellent free option is Netscape Composer, which comes free with the Netscape web browser. It doesn't have the power of other editors but can be easily used to create real basic web pages.

If you are willing to learn HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) - and it is not as hard as you think - you will have greater flexibility in building your web pages. Even if you use WYSIWYG software, a basic knowledge of HTML can be very useful in making your pages look exactly the way you want them to look.

You can learn the basics of HTML from the free interactive tutorial at http://www.davesite.com/webstation/html. The tutorial explains HTML in plain English, step by step. It provides you with examples and lets you try out each new skill as you learn it.

It would also be helpful to learn some basic JavaScript. An excellent online JavaScript tutorial can be found at http://wsabstract.com . This same site has free JavaScripts that you can cut and paste into your website's HTML code.

My favorite HTML editor is Arachnophilia. What I like most about it is the price - free! It provides a number of tool bars and wizards to make writing your HTML code easier. Check it out here:

http://www.arachnoid.com/arachnophilia/

If you are willing to pay for commercial software, HotDog Pro is actually the best HTML editor that I have ever used. The creators of HotDog Pro have recently developed a new product for beginners called HotDog PageWiz. It combines HTML editing with WYSIWYG features. I have not tried it myself and reviews I have read are mixed. You can download free trial copies of both programs here:

http://www.sausage.com/

These HTML editor programs allow you to preview your pages in both Internet Explorer and Netscape assuming you have both on your computer. This is a very good idea because Netscape and Explorer each display HTML a little bit differently. As a result, a page that looks good on one might not look good on the other.

Follow the instructions in Chapter 5 - Creating Your Website Step By Step - to create the content for your web pages.

When your pages are completed (and you've previewed them to make sure they look OK) it is time to put them online. For this you will need a web hosting service. You have a couple of options:

1. You can probably get web hosting from your internet service provider (ISP). But shop around first - prices can vary considerably.
2. You can get a professional web hosting service. This will cost you anywhere from $7.95 to $19.95 per month. Just type 'web hosting' into your favorite search engine and you'll find lots of them. Beware! Sometimes the "cheap" web hosting services have hidden charges. And tech support can vary from outstanding to awful. An inexpensive one that I can personally recommend is:

http://www.dayanahost.com/

 

3. You can get free web hosting, but I would recommend against it. The hosting is free because they put a banner ad at the top of each of your pages and often an annoying 'pop-up' or 'pop-under' ad as well. Also, all of the search engines give free hosting sites 2^nd class status. This is because they are often used by spammers. Free web hosting also undermines your credibility. Net savvy customers might ask themselves, "What kind of business is this if they can't afford $20.00 a month for web hosting?"

You will also need to purchase a domain name (which is another name for your web address or URL). You don't actually buy a domain name, you rent it from year to year. Your web hosting service should be able to take care of this for you. You should not pay more than $15.00 per year. The cheapest domain names are available from http://godaddy.com but I personally like http://000domains.com because they are easy to use.

Now you have your web pages, your web hosting and your domain name. It's time to get those pages online. To do this you will need an FTP program such as WS_FTP:

http://www.ipswitch.com/products/file-transfer.html

What this program does is simply transfer files from your computer to the big computers (called servers) at the web hosting service. Some HTML editors have FTP programs built into them. Check your software manuals or help files before you buy separate software.

Once all of that is completed, your web pages are up and ready to go!