Hi, I have a question for anyone that could help me through this. I was asked to build a website for a growing company because I have previous experience in school building them, and friends with the owner of the company but in the past I have only used geocities for my own personal sites, and have used them because they are free. Now I'm going to need a .com/ .ca site and can't go about finding out how I can do this... I would like to purchase a page and when I typed in the companys name followed by .com, and .ca both were available but didn't give me any information on how I can purchase the page and begin building, I want to learn how to do this on my own, but I'm going to need some help so if anyone has any suggestions for me id greatly appreciate it, thanks ;D

The first thing you have to do is find a place that has webhosting that you pay for. 99.999999(ok, you get the point)% of these sites offer domain names as well. The one that I used was AMRAY hosting, a Canadian site based in Winnipeg, Manitoba that offers very cheap hosting for people that only need a small amount of space, but need powerful addons such as PHP or CGI. Now, you'll need to enter your credit card information, etc. with them and wait for a confirmation. They'll tell you how to get started.

Now, keep in mind that if you're making a website for a company, you need a professional look with a simple navagation system. Meaning, no image backgrounds, no wacky colours, no dumb, annoying animated GIFS. It'd be a VERY VALUABLE asset to learn Swish (go to www.swishzone.com) and you can create amazing, powerful, and effective websites.

Hope that helps.

Oh, and please, please, please try and make the site as un-bloated as possible. For 56K users like myself, flashy animations take a back seat (a very back seat) to speed.

It doesn't matter if you have the best-looking website on the internet, with tons of interactive flash content -- if it takes 3 minutes to load, I've already left. My average bandwidth is 5KB/second. If you have a 300KB flash animation, that is about one minute loading time for me.

Less is more.


:)
~psi42

Chances are the growing company needs customers that not only stuck with dial up, older computers, and 15'' monitors, but also ones choosing to use Macs and Linux. Many people don't have a sysadmin to keep all the latest doodads working on their computers. Avoid using MS tools to build a site that only works well with a new, high end system running windows. When you have it done, try to access it from you Dad's home computer, or your Grandmother's.

A couple of terrible sites are www.photoworks.com and www.vonage.com. Last Memorial Day weekend I had some top computer talent visiting. One highly experienced professional thought I made a great choice when I suggested Blackboard as a slow, hard to work with site.

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also ones choosing to use Macs and Linux... Avoid using MS tools to build a site that only works well with a new, high end system running windows.

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Hear, hear!

Couldn't have put it better myself

:)

 I think those are the lamest answers to that guys questions... ever! Hey man you want real answers make sure you check out our new forums exclusively for website and PC help. "56k" lmao complaining about your ultra slow internet connection very funny yeah lets make dull boring pages just for the 56k lamers yeah OK pal. Hey get with the times man get a real connection that's not our problem you can't afford or want a cable or better connection. That is just ridiculous and you should not have "ultra expert" next to your name.  should be Ultra "poser" or "lamer".  man flash is great. Use the macromedia suite expensive but if you really want to make good flash and or sites come to my forums and well help. Where we are actually certified in html,php,mysql,unix,IT,Ms,linux,etc specialists there no way these guys are experts. ::)

That is one ugly page

LiQuiD8ToRoK do everyone a favor n just keep to yourself!

Ok matey, I know there's a few answers in here to your question but no 1 seems to have giving you the direction I think your looking for.
The first step to making a web page for any company is the planning of the infrustructure, implementation and research the necessary requirement of the company. You need to know the goals of the company, What the company wants to achieve from the website.

On the domain subject, just go to a search engine and type in domain hosts. It will giv you most companies that do that.

Hope that is of sum help.
Regards~

Okay, it looks like liquid8tor from OK is just a complete idiot. If I ran my business with his ethics I would be under faster than Dan Rather could say another stupid slang saying. Here are some links that will help you fully.

www.pagesgarden.com hosting and domain for 60 a year.

Okay one link. They are most likely the best for the money. Everyone should try them out except for liquid squirt guy. He needs to pay for everything he gets and pay the most for it. Idiot.

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Originally Posted by LiQuiD8ToRoK

I think those are the lamest answers to that guys questions... ever! Hey man you want real answers make sure you check out our new forums exclusively for website and PC help. "56k" lmao complaining about your ultra slow internet connection very funny yeah lets make dull boring pages just for the 56k lamers yeah OK pal. Hey get with the times man get a real connection that's not our problem you can't afford or want a cable or better connection. That is just ridiculous and you should not have "ultra expert" next to your name. Should be Ultra "poser" or "lamer". Man flash is great. Use the macromedia suite expensive but if you really want to make good flash and or sites come to my forums and well help.

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d00d! Y0u mU57 b t3h 1337 Fr0|\|7p4G3 |\/|4s73R! 1!! Please t34cH m3 uR m4g1C 1337 p0w3rZ!@!!

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where we are actually certified in html,php,mysql,unix,IT,Ms,linux,etc specialists there no way these guys are experts. ::)

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I suggest you get a certification in English. It will help.



Seriously, though. I now have ADSL, and yes, it is a very nice improvement. However, even with the greatly increased bandwidth, I still hate the sites with lots of flash and "interactive" crap. People don't want to see flash unless it is a flash movie. People go to websites to get information, not to look at silly flashing images that annoy them beyond belief. They especially don't go to see a website that only takes up 20% of their browser window because it was designed for one resolution and configuration only and never extensively tested.


Stop bloating the web.

Have to stick my head on the block as well.I am lucky enough to have broadband,yet lots of flash animations,and graphics flying across the screen is useless.What are you there to see,a movie?
If a site has a relevant title,links and good detail,informing me of what I need,then I will re-visit and recommend it to my friends.If it looks like a cross between 'over-the-rainbow' and 'war-and-peace' I will never go there again.
Don't build your web site to look like a Steven Spielberg epic,stick to basics.
:D

Postscript.
If you want sound advice about web site building,one of the best info sites on the web is http://www.htmlgoodies.com which is run by Joe Burns.
Read the article entitled "The Non-Technical Intro" by Vince Barnes,on web building.To me,it makes interesting reading. http://www.htmlgoodies.com/nontechintro/

Here's my 2 or 3 cents:
You'll need a development 'environment', a site name and a host.


Site Creation:
"... because i have previous experiance in school building them, and ... i have only used geocities..."


I suggest downloading Mozilla as a good wysiwyg editor, from mozilla.org. This is not the same as Firefox, listed on the same page - check the bottom of the page for the mozilla icon. Mozilla is actually the old Netscape and has Composer as part of it. Composer allows you to drag and drop and is a great entry level designing tool - you can drag/drop and then see the code built for you. Save pages locally and either ftp them (download a good tool from smartftp.com and buy if you like it) or else upload them directly from Mozilla. Once you download Mozilla, hit Ctrl+E or else hit Window/Composer. Learn html and javascript with a free tutorial on www.w3schools.com - very few ad's and very useful!

Your first page should be called index.htm or else index.html. There are others but you want to make sure that it will come up properly. Files should be built relative to the page you're on (that's a function you'll see when editing/creating the html). As you get better at this you'll want more advanced tools. I suggest looking around sourceforge.net for open source 'freebies.'


Site Name:
"...im going to need a .com/ .ca site and can't go about finding out how i can do this...i would like to purchase a page and when i typed in the companys name followed by .com, and .ca both were available..."


You'll need a place to host it and ownership of the name.

Buying the site:
Be careful where you buy the name, you want to make sure that you actually own it. I have used Yahoo before and they are bad - they are difficult to break from once they have your credit card - cancelling is tough. I suggest www.powerpipe.com, domains are about $8 each per year. You can buy it from them and then just sit on it until you have a server to put it on. Once you buy it and post your servers' IP address, it will only take a few minutes for people all over the world to see your stuff.

Hosting:
Assuming that you now own the site and that you have something built, you need to host it somewhere. You can host this at the client site or at some providor. I actually bought a really cool box and host sites at home (just stuff for myself and for friends). The server is at www.nogalis.com and I think it sells for around $600 for the base model (that's what I bought and it's perfect). If you do this, you might also want to get a fixed IP address from your ISP, which costs about $10 extra per month but you don't have to. You'll then need to configure your router at your house (assuming you have a router) to forward the traffic to your Web server. Actually, if you want to know more about doing this send a question, this is getting off the subject...

If hosting at the company, then just zip and send your site to their network person. If hosting at some other location (powerpipe, etc.), they should offer the ability to directly upload the site from your development PC.

One final thought - use good passwords! Something with a lot of characters and numbers...

Hope this helps.

Also try looking at http://www.tophosts.com. That's a directory of web hosts. You can search for a host on price, server type etc. Also you could pop into a big high street newsagent (e.g. WH Smiths would be a UK example), they should stock a few internet/web design magazines. Those will be filled with all kinds of adverts for hosts etc. Some of them might even include reviews on hosts.

GoDaddy.com is the best place to go for domain names. You will own the name, the fee is 8.99 or less and they can host for you. PM me if you have any questions about godaddy. They currently have over 5.3mil domains registered through them. Here is some more info

Taken from GoDaddy About us page:
Go Daddy is widely recognized for its success, having won the CNET Editor’s Choice award in 2001, the Name Intelligence Largest Net Gain Award in both 2002 and 2003 as well as the #1 Best Overall Registrar in 2003. Go Daddy also won the Arizona Corporate Excellence Award for fastest growing privately-held company in 2003 and Most Innovative Large Company in 2004.

Why take on such a task from a company that needs professional help, and why did they choose you with no real experience.

Sounds like either you will get fired in the end or it won't turn out the way you both planned.

I know what Im doing and I would not build a site for a company.

Why would you want to with no experience.

Build one for yourself, get experience, then if that's what you want to do for a job or side job then move on.

Why not just say I just got hired to cook in a restaurant, can anyone tell me how to cook, anyone else here, just get hired for a job and need someone here to help them or show them how to do it, before they get fired.

I must say this is one of the dumbest posts Ive ever seen anywhere.

I got a job, uh oh, please help me, I don't know how to do the job.

Get real, I think forums are for helping people that need real help, not helping people that have taken on a job an then realize they don't know their azz from a hole in the ground and can't do it.

Get balls and tell them you screwed up, you don't know how the heck to even start, LOL, people should not even try to help such a crazy post.

:cool:

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Originally Posted by Wendy225

Why take on such a task from a company that needs professional help, and why did they choose you with no real experience.

Sounds like either you will get fired in the end or it wont turn out the way you both planned.

I know what Im doing and I would not build a site for a company.

Why would you want to with no experience.

Build one for yourself, get experience, then if thats what you want to do for a job or side job then move on.

why not just say I just got hired to cook in a restaraunt, can anyone tell me how to cook, anyone else here, just get hired for a job and need someone here to help them or show them how to do it, before they get fired.

I must say this is one of the dumbest posts Ive ever seen anywhere.

I got a job, uh oh, please help me, I dont know how to do the job.

Get real, I think forums are for helping people that need real help, not helping people that have taken on a job an then realize they dont know their azz from a hole in the ground and can't do it.

Get balls and tell them you screwed up, you dont know how the heck to even start, LOL, people should not even try to help such a crazy post.

:cool:

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Wendy,
First of all, when are you going to learn to look at the dates? You just unleashed a tirade about a question that was posted a YEAR ago!

Second, the questioner indicated he was friends with the owner of this "growing" company. Translation: my friend is trying to build a business and doesn't have much money so he asked me to help. Try reading the questions more carefully.

Third, we are here to provide assistance to people. While there are times when sarcasm and criticism are appropriate, I don't feel this was one of those times. Yes, it would have been good advice to SUGGEST that they use a pro, but there was no call for the derogatory tone of your response.

Your response, is, In my opinion, one of the dumbest I have seen. It was rude, uncalled for and not helpful.

Mmnn.Critisism aside Wendy,you still replied to this "crazy post" as you put it.People need answers,not put downs.Lol.I hope that if your experience briefly goes awol at some time,no one refuses to help your "crazy post".Not very nice is it?


Happy easter,
Nez. :D

Getting Firefox is one of the top sugestion on this thread. Good luck with the new site! Let us know how it turns out.