1. What does it take to build a website?
1. Domain name registration
2. Web hosting
3. HTML / Content creation
2. Search Engines
1. Web site submission
2. Web site Optimization

1. Decide on a domain name and then register it.
2. Signup with a Web Hosting company.
3. Create HTML pages and upload those to your web hosting company.

Many companies offer package deals that do all of this. They will register your domain name, give you space on their server and provide you with templates for creating your own website. I have no recommendations or links for this way of doing web business, since it's not what I do, and there are many reasons why you wouldn't want to go about it this way, such as:

1. Generally poor or even non-existent customer service
2. You're on your own, and templates are often simple and unable to meet many people's expectations for a unique and professional looking website.
3. You're probably going to have to put a lot of your own time and effort into the project, time that is better spent for most people doing what it is they do for a living. Be prepared to spend many frustrating hours to get it working the way you want it to work.

What are the benefits of doing it this way (one stop shopping)? You will get the lowest price this way, so if cost is a big issue for you, then this may be your best bet. You will also get email addresses as part of any web hosting deal you choose, regardless of whether it's with one of these "one stop shopping" web companies, or with a small independent web hosting company.

A domain name is comprised of alphanumeric characters which are used symbolically by the web browser to locate the web host that contains a website. The domain name is a symbolic way to avoid using the real IP address of the server. All computers that are hooked to any kind of network have a unique IP address. The IP address is a bit like the address on your house. So the domain name is a quick, easily remembered way of finding your website, no matter where it physically resides around the world.

A domain name is comprised of a Top Level Domain, such as: .COM .NET .ORG

Then there has to be a 1st level name as well, and optionally even a 2nd level domain name, all to the left of the top level one (such as "MyDomainName.com")

The following example illustrates the difference between a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) and a domain name:

      URL:   http://www.example.net/index.html
      Domain name:   www.example.net
      Registered domain name:   example.net

For a more detailed description of what a Domain Name is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name

Web hosts are companies that provide space on a server they own for use by their clients as well as providing Internet connectivity, typically in a data center.

If you're simply looking for the best package deal, as we discussed above, here's a good place for comparison shopping: http://www.webhostingchoice.com/

None of these web hosting companies have been vetted by me, so proceed at your own risk.

The web host company that I have used for 8 years is: http://laughingsquid.net/

The name may make you laugh, but their service will make you smile. The difference in price is about $8/mo instead of the cheap hosts who are around $5/mo. Laughing Squid is a company owned and based out of San Francisco and customer service is their specialty. My experience with the larger cheaper companies is that there is no customer service to speak of. If you need to talk to someone, good luck, if you actually get to talk to someone and they speak English as their first language, then you have really lucked out. Talking to someone with technical expertise is even more difficult.

It is possible using various applications to host a website right from your own PC. I would strongly discourage that for a number of reasons, please talk to me personally if you really want to do this.

The very first step in establishing a web presence is to register a domain name. For businesses this would obviously be your business name, but that mey be taken, for most artists this should be your name, but if you have a fairly common name, you may have to become creative in finding a name that isn't already taken.

There are many ways and companies that will register your name or help you find out what's available, but the quickest is probably:

http://www.whois.net/

Type in the name you want in the "domain name" input area, for example "johndoe-fineart.com" and you will find out if it's available, and if not, you will get what's called the "Who Is" information that shows you who has registered this name and their contact information. You can also use the "WhoIs" tool to find out basic information about any domain name.

If the name you would like is not already taken, I recommend using Register.com to get it registered. They are not the cheapest company out there for registering the domain name you desire, but they are easy to use and reliable.

What if the name you want is already taken? There are many choices besides just .COM as the top level part of your domain name, the problem of course is that most people automatically think .COM when they think web. Most of the registration websites will suggest, or help you to find other options that are not in use. Think about this carefully, as this is a crtical business decision involving name and brand recognition, as well as usability. You don't want someone to find another website by just mispelling a single letter in your domain name, and you don't want to be confused with others, so take some time to consider all your options.

If you choose one of the "all in one" packages, then you will probably be provided with some templates that will allow you to create a fairly simple website without too much trouble. But if you have something in your mind's eye that doesn't show up already in a template, you're going to be frustrated, as template driven systems aren't very flexible and typically offer few bells and whistles.

HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language. Technically, it's not a programming language; it simply tells the Browser how to render a page using text and images. But HTML can contain JavaScript, which is a true programming language, allowing you to do dynamic things with your website. In general, to build your website you will need to create one HTML file for each webpage you want to create. The first page displayed by the browser will always be "index.html" (or the extension can be shortened to .htm). For most people, Index.html is their homepage. All other HTML files can be whatever you would like to call them.

A more detailed description of HTML is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML

Some people will probably want to try to make their own website using one of the many tools that are available for this. The most popular ones are: Dreamweaver, MS Frontpage, Coffee Cup, Hotdog, Tarantula, and many more too numerous to mention.

While some of these are better than others at allowing a novice to create web pages, they all require a fair bit of study just to get started and a lot of work if you want to use them well.

If there is any chance that you might end up doing more than just your own website, then you need to choose carefully which product you learn, as this is a skill you want to be worth something as the years go by. Time spent learning a product that ceases to remain viable is time mostly wasted. So my recommendation is to go with the industry leader at this time -Dreamweaver. It's by far the most complex and powerful, but it's also the industry standard and if you have any desire to get a job building websites, this is the product you need to know.

I do not recommend MS Front Page for those people who might be serious about learning to build web sites. Microsoft products typically do not play well with others. Other than their Office Suite, which is the industry leader in corporate office products, their authoring and design products are far behind the industry leader Adobe in both acceptance and quality. So my recommendation is to stick with Adobe products if you are inclined to learn any of these complex software packages.

Whatever skills you acquire working with Adobe products will be much more marketable and worth more to you personally since there is a much larger user design community available to you as a resource to tap into for advice.

Obviously, since I am a web designer, I recommend this path. Web design started off as a hobby for me when attempting to use Dreamweaver which I found to be incredibly complicated and not all that easy to use to get the result I desired. So to build my skill set I took classes at Shoreline Community College in HTML and JavaScript, which allowed me to code HTML by hand, rather than using the WYSIWYG interface that is the lure of programs like Dreamweaver and Coffee Cup. These applications look simple and easy to use, but most people find them to be incredibly time consuming and it quickly turns into a project that takes much longer than they ever imagined.

Hiring someone means that the sky is generally the limit. Your website can look however you envision it. Instead of your time and patience, your budget will become the limiting factor, not the very basic web design skills that you may or may not have. Good looking professional sites don't happen by accident or on someone's first attempt at doing it themselves. You only get one chance to make a first impression.

Fonts - Many PC users don't understand that fonts are unique to each PC (or Mac). Only a subset of all the possible fonts, the most popular ones are consistently found on most PCs. If the font you like or choose for your website is not found on a person's PC, then the browser will select a different one for you. This can lead to a look that may not be what you want or expect. Here is a link that shows both the percentage of PCs that have the font installed, and what that font looks like:

http://www.codestyle.org/css/font-family/sampler-WindowsResults.shtml

Making a choice that isn't on this list can be risky. If designed properly, you can choose backup fonts to your main choice, so if the first one isn't found then another similar one will be. But if you choose a highly stylized font, then you run the risk of that font not being found on many PCs and consequently your site layout will not look as you intend it.

Screen Size - Several years ago, almost all sites, including the major e-commerce ones were designed for an 800x600 screen resolution. But now thanks to the introduction of cheap and large flat screen monitors, the most popular size is now 1024x768. This gives us a lot more screen space to work with. Here's a link that shows the percentage of users for each screen size.

I recommend designing to the 1024x768 specification:
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_display.asp

The importance of screen size is that if you design for a width that is larger than what a given PC is using, then the person browsing your website will have to scroll not only up and down, which we are all used to, but also left and right, and that is a type of usability issue that annoys a lot of people. Since only about 8% of the market is using a screen size of 800x600, they are the only ones who will be scrolling both left and right and up and down for a site designed at 1024x768.

A site designed for a screen size larger than 1024x768 will have about 40% of the audience scrolling in two dimensions.

Flash - Many commercial websites use Adobe's Flash product to create animated content that looks a lot like a billboard or TV commercial. They are quite common, so whether you realize it or not, you've seen one. However, Flash can also be used to create entire websites. Because this is a very advanced way to do things, it tends to be more expensive. It's also a technique that does not function well unless the user is on a broadband connection. Anyone with an old dialup modem connection is not going to enjoy a Flash based website. I use Flash frequently to create small areas on the screen where images can scroll by. To see one example, click here, more examples are here (scroll down to the "Flash" section).

Learn to use the search engine of your choice (I prefer Google) as a technical and practical resource for literally any question you might have. The better you get at using a search engine, the quicker you can learn new things and answer your own questions.

I don't consider myself a "search guru" by any means, but a common reaction I get from clients when they see how I use Google is ... "I didn't know you could do that!." So experiment and learn to better use the search engine of your choice and you will not believe the vast amount of information and things that are just a click away.

Of course, for every good story there is about the Net and how easy it can be to use a search engine, there is a horror story. Surfing the Net can be a danergous thing if you are not paying attention and don't have some properly constructed security walls in place on your system. Make sure to read up on how to properly protect your system.

Here is a security reference starting place: http://netsecurity.about.com/od/security101/Security_101.htm

If you already have a website, submit to the Yahoo Directory and all other search engines will eventually find and list your website based on that one entry. There is a yearly charge of $299. If you choose to go this route, do it for one year and then cancel your subscription to Yahoo Directory. By the end of the first year all the other search engines will have found your site and you'll be listed with them as well: https://ecom.yahoo.com/dir/submit/intro/

There are three main factors that determine the search engine ranking of your website:

• Site optimization: http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-friendly-resources/search-engine-optimisation/basics.shtml
• Site popularity
• Link popularity

Inbound links to a website play a significant part in determining its position in the search engines. Be aware though, it's not just the quantity, but also the quality and click-through-rate of links to your website which is of importance. To find out more about building up links to your website please read the article, Build up links to your website.

The more confident a search engine is about the subject of your website, the higher your web pages will be in the search rankings. If you only place your keyword phrases in the META tags your website will not get a high ranking.

Some of the best places to put keyword phrases are:

• Page title
• In headings
• As links
• In bold text
• In the first 25 words on the page (this refers to the first 25 words of text placed in the HTML document, which is often navigation)
• In the file name (i.e. the URL), so make HTML file names meaningful
• META tags

Once upon a time, this was considered the be-all-end-all of how to get your website higher in the search engine results order. Now Meta Tag optimization is simply what needs to be properly addressed to make sure that your website appears as you would like it to within those search engines, as well as directories and listings that are done according to key words that are important and prolific in the type of business that you are engaged in.

http://www.clickz.com/3496146

Here's are some resources:

http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-friendly-resources/search-engine-optimisation/submit-search-engines.shtml

http://www.submitexpress.com/submit.html

And finally, the search engine business is never static and is constantly evolving. So what's presented here could be obsolete in another year. Basically there is a game being played here. People want to "game" the system so that they can be on the first page of any search without having to be on the web for years and viewed by millions of people, which is the way the search engines want it to work.

So even though you follow every tip possible in getting your website to be seen and listed by the major search engines, don't expect to gain a highly ranked position without being on the Net for awhile or having a site that is very popular. There are no magic bullets.

HTML email is email that has been designed using the same code, HTML, as you use to build web pages. What that looks like to you, the person reading email is, you see graphic images, links and a much more rich, colorful and interesting type of email than a normal text only one. Some HTML emails even look just like the website they are attempting to market to you.

But just like anything else there are pluses and minuses to HTML email.

First, it's very complicated, so don't even think about doing it yourself. Because there are so many different email applications in use around the world, all of which render the HTML email differently, you can never be 100% certain that what you intend for your target audience to see is what they actually get.

But if you've read any emails lately from almost any corporate entity that markets directly to you via email, they all use HTML email. If you would like to use it, there are several options:

• Hire someone to do it for you
• Use a service like Constant Contact to help you, they have stock templates or you can create and use your own custom made template. I can help with that process, so that your Constant Contact template looks like your website or your other marketing materials.
• Use an email application like Gmail which doesn't do HTML email, but it does allow you to create enriched emails that are similar to HTML email and are much better looking than plain text emails. This is probably the cheapest and easiest way to go about it.

The real benefit of HTML email is the ability to create links that drive your clients to the website that you want them to see. Plain text emails have no "sizzle" and consequently are easily deleted without the desired effect of getting someone over to your website for a closer look.