How to Create a Website

chillibreeze writer — Sreedevi Purayannur

Basic freedom of speech and expressing oneself has found new outlets in the form of websites dedicated to personal musings, commercial concerns and entertainment. While personal websites may or may not fetch money like the other two, there are certain common features underlying the construction of websites under all the three categories.

The top priority for any website is its visitors. The attention span of an internet surfer is very short. Websites need to take extra care in holding it long enough for the person to come back again. No website can afford to have technical hitches or verbose content that bore or confuse visitors and turn them away to other sites.

Informative content should be supplemented with pictures, giving the right balance between text and graphics
Text should be brief, to the point and relevant. Nobody has the patience to read long strings of words and winding sentences.
Animation and graphics should suit the target audience. For example, a website meant for children should have more audio and video, where as the same in a professional website distracts the serious reader
Difficult navigation is a strict no-no for any kind of website. It is important to remember that people use the internet to save time
Easy downloads are just as important; pictures, animation and graphics should be well-balanced for the webpage to download in a few seconds

Here are some basic steps that you can follow to get your website up and kicking on the internet.

1) Register your domain name: The domain name is all-important for a website. This is your professional identity, your visiting card to the online community. Choose a name that your visitors will remember you by. You can register your domain name like .net, .com or .org with a company that lets you register according to your budget preferences. Sites like www.register.com and www.networksolutions.com charge nominal amounts per year and provide round the clock technical support. You simply have to log onto these websites, reserve your domain name and pay upfront for as many number of years as you wish to. Once the term is up, you can always go back and renew your registration.

2) Choose a web host service provider: It is important to choose a web hosting service that gives you good service, a few email addresses in your domain and ability to upload on your website at any time of the day. A web hosting service that gives complete solutions for designing, running and troubleshooting is much better than others which provide only specialized services. You cannot afford to have a network of hosting service providers for each and every feature in your website. Also, free web hosting may cost you much more than money; it may cost you the freedom to experiment and upgrade your website in terms of space, design and reliability. Website Tonight Hosting, Power Web Hosting and Turbo-charged Web Hosting are some providers who offer affordable web hosting plans for 5-20 page websites.

3) Web templates: Beginners who are not familiar with HTML should look for free web templates that facilitate easy upload. You can choose from hundreds of design templates available online. Some web hosting services also provide easy-to-use templates, with which pages can be created by a click of the mouse.

4) HTML: You cannot build a website without HTML. You can either choose to learn HTML or hire a professional designer for your website. Getting familiar with HTML is no easy task, but a command over the language gives you lot of freedom in designing your website. Once you learn the basics of HTML, you can use tools like Macromedia Flash, Dreamweaver or MS FrontPage to upload images and text on to your website. If this proves too much for you, hire a professional designer to create a unique look for your website.

5) Content: Have a clear purpose for your website. Consider your target audience and the kind of things they will be looking for in your website. If you want to sell products, you need to provide minimum content and easy navigation. Informational websites provide simple text and relevant pictures. Look at other websites on the same subject, their target audience, hit history and content management.

To ensure that your website serves its purpose, you need to constantly keep checking that all the links are working and that fresh content is always put on the website. The use of simple, but consistent layout and logical organization of information will carry clear messages to the readers. Relevant internal and external links at crucial points in the text and visually attractive pages will keep the reader hooked to your site.

Tips for creating different types of websites

Depending upon the content of your website, there is a sea difference in the approach you have towards building it. You cannot build a commercial website the same way as a website for entertainment. And a personal website, yet again, will be created with a different approach. Factors like the design, the graphics, the content and the cost depend upon your revenues from the website, your target audience and your client base.

1) Personal: Web logs and free hosting spaces on large servers like Yahoo and MSN have resulted in an upsurge in the number of personal websites on the internet. Unless you are J.K Rowling or Jackie Chan or Michael Jackson, it is unlikely that you will go for a paid personal website when you can have a cozy nook on the web for free. But if you are ready to shell out a few dollars, you can indulge by implementing your opinions, ideas and fancies and create your own website with your chosen domain name. It is simple and fast enough with the right kind of tools and a good web hosting service provider.

2) Commercial: Creating commercial websites are much more complicated as they target specific groups of people and intend to bring in money for the owners. The use of color, animation, graphics, text and language vary according to different target audiences. For example, a business website will go for sober colors like blue, black and white, have one or two pictures per web page and have few categorized links clearly spelling out their products and business dealings. But a website for online shopping will have little text, lots of pictures, audio and video animation for particular products, hundreds of web pages and thousands of links, all aimed at easy online shopping. However, creating a professional website can be done within a period of 24 hours to a fortnight and well within $300 dollars.

3) Entertainment: Music, movies, ring tones, games – the World Wide Web is full of them. Since the advent of the internet, the entertainment industry across the world has seen new horizons and is all set to see many more. Creating a new website solely for entertainment means you are dealing with large amounts of server space, fast downloads and complicated animations, Live streaming of audio and video is also an integral part of an entertainment website. Yes, the task is Herculean, and you will need every bit of professional help you can get for the creation of a music or movie website.

All said and done, creating a website is not as complicated as it sounds. There are many online tutorials and guides which help you create and design your own website with a set of easy internet tools. If you are able strike the right balance between space, downloading time and attractiveness, you can very well design a website that sets you apart from the crowd. A little creative sense and minimum knowledge of what your reader would like is all it takes!

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—About our writer:

Sreedevi says, "Writing is a passion for me. Or you and I would never have met and shared ideas....Oh, yeah I love to read a lot too..."

How to Create a Website

Tips for creating different types of websites

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