Here are roughly the steps involved in doing a web site:
1. Planning:
You want to have a clear idea of what you want to say, and who you want to reach. Study other websites intended for your target audiences: which ones are most effective? Take notes, and decide what message you want to get across with your website and what functions it will provide its visitors (information, selling products, selling services, etc.). Start gathering the raw data for your content.
2. Setting Up The Infrastructure:
Decide whether you are going to do it yourself, or hire someone to do it. The cheapest way to find someone good and affordable is one of these job posting boards:
Guru,
Elance, or
RentACoder. Look at other posted projects and be sure you understand the ins & outs of the board before you post. Hire someone who has at least five projects under their belt of comparable complexity, and who has been given a decent rating by past employers.
If you decide to do it yourself, the best small business package for Windows in my opinion is
Web Easy Professional and the best for Macintosh OS X is
RapidWeaver. Both are template-based, inexpensive, easy to use, flexible, powerful, and create professional quality websites.
You'll need to find a web hosting service and register domain names. You can't go wrong in my opinion by choosing a host from
this top ten list or
this one. There are other top ten lists out there, too. Finding a domain name that's available can be a challenge; you may have to choose a variant of your company name. Be sure to get the .com, .net, and .org variants of your domain name. The web hosting service will allow you to select your domain name when you register, and provide instructions for uploading your site.
Both Web Easy Pro and RapidWeaver have built-in software to upload your site to the web host's server; this uses a technique called FTP. I'd recommend also downloading a free FTP client;
FileZilla is a great one (you want the client version).
3. Design:
Lay out the structure of your site on paper first, and organize your content accordingly. Remember, you don't have to have your content 100% right up front, and you can write placeholders for pages (like "my bio goes here") and fill them in later. Decide on images for your site, the site's title, and a slogan for the site. There are a number of affordable logo creation packages out there,
Logo Creator is just one of them.
You can use your own photos and art, buy stock photos and art, or find free ones to use. Be sure you understand the usage policies of the website, and provide any required credits for the image authors. I like to start by looking for a free image at
stock.xchng, and if I can't find free I go for very affordable at
BigStockPhoto or
iStockPhoto (there are many other sources, of course, but these are ones I've used).
Once you have your stuff together, create your site using your web design software of choice. RapidWeaver has many third party plugins and templates, and a great support forum. I'm not sure about Web Easy Pro, I haven't personally used it. Publish your site with your web design software, and look at it in your favorite browser.
4. Market and Promote:
Now you have to make sure your visitors can find you.
Here's another thread with useful information on marketing your site online (Search Engine Optimization, or
SEO).
Linear Mode
