The "I want a website" Guide
 

The "I want a website" Guide

*** Warning!! ***
This guide is long, but purely because the subject is very complex.
If reading this amount of information isn't for you, then I suggest you re-think setting up a website full stop. Because you WILL need to do some research.

So there you go, this is your last chance to turn back. ;)

Introduction

There are many different methods that people associate with getting a website up and running.
Also, there are many different requirements placed on those websites.

This guide is intended to assist you no matter which category of website owner you fall into.
Whether it be beginner, intermeadiate or advanced.

However, the most logical seperation in groups isn't experience, but money.
Therefore I'll do my best to offer appropriate options at each stage for the free-loaders and yuppies alike. ( I'm going to use the following shorthand for the remainder of the guide: ": -£ :" for the cheapest option, ": £ :" for moderate spenders and ": £ÂÃ ¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚£ÃƒÆ’‚£ :" for the money-no-object crew. )

Where do I start?

Firstly you need to decide what you want to do and how much time you're willing to put into a site.
You need to know the focus or subject your site will have, how many people you expect to visit your site and whether you want it to be business or personal. All these factors will drastically affect what you do during the next few stages.

Next, you'll need a domain.

Domains

Domain definition:

A "logical" region of the Internet.

People sometimes refer to them loosely as "sites."

Generally, a domain corresponds to an IP address or group of IP addresses.
An IP address is a unique identifyer for the physical hardware that responds to requests for your domain.
You'll also find domain names to the right of the @ sign in an email address, or about ten characters into a URL.
For example, Microsofts's domain name is microsoft.com.

The domain name of the email address "billgates@mailserver1.microsoft.com" is still microsoft.com. If you read the email address from right to left the last part ".com" is the domain type.
Domain names are issued by a licenced authority.
A .com is supposed to be reserved purely for companies, but since the USA like to think they're the only country in the world they tend to treat it as their country extension, which is in fact ".us" just as the extension for the UK is ".uk".
Other supposedly generic extensions include .edu (educational establishment), .net (network), .org (non-profit organisation) and .gov (government body) to name a few.

• Whether you're planning to set up a site without spending a bean.. or whether you want an all singing all dancing multimedia business presence, you'll need a domain to let people find you on the internet.
  
• Your domain should reflect your sites theme as much as possible, but that is largely optional.
  
• The price you pay for a domain will vary, possibly more than you think, based on whether you go for a .com, .co.uk, .me.uk, etc and also, on which registrar you use.

*** Beware!! ***
Depending on where you register a domain, you may find you're tied into hosting your site with the company you get the domain with. Also you may find that you can't change or transfer your domain without a long painful session of emails and/or faxes.
If you want full control of your domain you'll need to be very sure that you read small print, terms & conditions and ask questions when you're not sure about something. ( Please refer to the section on hosting below to see why controlling your domain name can be very important )

: -£ :
Domains on the cheap are very easy, but that comes at a price in another sense. You will generally be very restricted in what you can actually do with many of the services. ( dot.tk for example, specifies that when you sign up for a free domain, all you're really doing is getting a name that forwards to your site at another location, you don't legally own the domain either which is a big one, as you can have it taken away from you if the site is inactive for 90 days. )
A simple search will give you quite a few alternatives, but the simplest method at least for NTL users is to rely purely on your own webspace and therefore use the http://homepage.ntlworld.com/username for your site.

If you take this free domain option, you will need to forward it to your webspace or hosting server. For an NTL user you would forward to http://homepage.ntlworld.com/username, the only other methods would be to forward to a static address like http://64.213.43.108/yourdirectory or to another legitimate domain name http://www.your-otherdomain.com. The last option is most useful if you have arranged to use a sub-domain of someone else. So you could do the following: http://www.myfreedomain.com forwarding to http://mysubdomain.myfriendssite.com.

Bear in mind that free domains will be fairly obscure. You will not be able to get common domains like .com, .org, .co.uk, .net, .info, .tv. If you want one of those you'll have to make the step up to the next section.

: £ :
You can in theory buy a domain with any authorised registrar, but for the purposes of simplicity and security I'm going to stick to UK based examples.

As this article demonstrates :link: it is very important to choose a reputable company. If you don't you could end up with a bucketload of spam, cold callers, hidden fees and possibly an invalid domain alltogether.

Here is a couple I would personally recommend:

• 123-reg.co.uk
• xreg.co.uk

: £ÂÃ ¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚£ÃƒÆ’‚£ :
Register and host your site with one company.

Generally the most expensive methods are the least hassle. But don't quote me on that ;)
With this option you can get a registrar to host your site and sort out all the associated technicalities.

This is an option also suited to the technophobes, as you'll be spoon fed all the nessecary information by the company that you choose. (at least you should if they're reputable)

The same caution is recommended as in the previous cost option.

Hosting

Why is hosting important?

• A good reliable host will make sure your site is backed up and online (available) as much as possible.
• A good host will have a stable, high bandwidth connection.
• The features offered on your account are as important as the content of your site. So a host that provides everything you need is essential.
• You will get better value for money if you shop around.
• A bad host will offer little or no support when there are problems.

There are millions (almost literally) of hosting options and companies which makes your next step probably one of the most difficult, but for the purposes of this guide and on the back of my own bias, I'll keep it very restricive and simple.

: -£ :
Stuartbe has kindly covered this option in his guide here: :link:

: £ : & : £ÂÃ ¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚£ÃƒÆ’‚£ :
<edit Rob: links deleted as no longer appropriate>
Obviously, you are free to try out any host you find, but my own experience leads me to err on the side of UK based companies who are governed by UK laws and regulations.

Once your hosting has been set up and paid for you'll need to make sure the two are reading from the same page so to speak.

DNS Settings, Web-Forwarding and Domain setup
If all those terms fill you with dread, don't worry.
The different options detailed in each section now show their value.
The higher cost and technophobe options will be dead easy as long as you've chosen by this point to get your hosting and domain from the same company.
All you do is fork over the funds and wait for the email with your instructions.
If you are one of those people, you can stop reading the guide here, as the company themselves should give you everything you need from now on but please take note of the next section "DNS propogation".

It does get more complicated though when your domain is in one place and your hosting somewhere entirely unconnected.

Get a domain with a company that offer full DNS access/control!
Often this will mean that you have a "control panel" in the list of features when you sign up. But it's no guarentee that you'll have access to the bits we need to change.
If you've already got a domain and don't have access like this it's not a problem really, just a bit inconvienient, because you'll have to make change requests to the company support/admin staff (which can take days rather than the minute or so for doing it yourself).
If you're setting up your domain to point at your NTL/Telewest or any ISP provided webspace or if you've used the free webserver guide by Stuartbe then you can ignore the "DNS" options. What you need now is the "web-forwarding" section in your domain control panel.
Once you've found it or when asking for it to be changed, you'll need to use the URL (http://mywebspacelocation).

The control panel options will vary, but you'll usually just get a box to fill in with a button to submit it.
If you want the page to display the domain name in the address bar while someone is on your webspace ("http://mypaiddomain.com" instead of "http://homepage.ntlworld.com/myfolder") you'll need to use the "framed" web-forwarding, also sometimes called "cloaked".
Again, for those using these free hosting options, you can now skip to the next section "DNS propogation".

For those with any other hosting webspace you should get an email or control panel information screen once you've set it up with a section giving you their "Nameserver" address.. "ns1.i-websolutions.co.uk" for example.
If they don't send you this information, you can ask them for it.
Once you have the address, go back to your domain registrar or control panel and find the section referencing "Nameservers". Next, fill in the control panel form, or request it to be changed to the address you've got.
You'll usually be putting in two name server addresses but they'll normally only differ by one digit (ns1.hostdomain.co.uk and ns2.hostdomain.co.uk).

DNS Propogation
You'll be glad to know that you're now almost finished.
This note is purely to warn you that the majority of the changes detailed in the last section will take a period of 24-48 hours to actually become active. Also, that means that if you asked your domain registrar to make a change it will possibly be this amount of time before you see it happen (or longer if the admin takes his time).

Building your Site
Hopefully now that you're at this stage, putting your domain name into a browser will either give you the contents of your ISP free webspace, or a holding page from your hosting company.
Your next job is to start adding files to your webspace using "FTP" (file transfer protocol).

First of all you'll need a good "FTP" client.
I'd recommend getting hold of FileZilla.
Once you've downloaded and installed, you'll need to connect to your webspace. Hopefully, you'll have a lot of very clear information on FTP in your setup email or control panel, most of which should be self explainitory.
Fill in the username, password and address details and hit "connect".
Usually, your default page will need to be called "default.html", "index.html" or "index.php". If you're in doubt just ask your host or one of us here on the forum.

The next stage is really up to you... use google to find some tutorials on basic web-design to get you started, you never know I might somehow find time to post a "website guide part 2" ;)

I hope this helps someone out there, let me know if you think I've missed anything, or if you want to add something useful.

Bye for now,

~s1lv3r

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

:tu:

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

This had been sitting on my desktop since I last mentioned it about 6 months back.. I found it while doing some housekeeping and thought I'd finish it off :D Thanks for the sticky Nem :tu:

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

Surely someone has some constructive critisism to give?

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

*last bump

No doubt this will be left to rot in the sticky area like most others, please let me know if you have any input or feedback on this.

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

Just that you should beware of some domain name companies - they will charge you for dns changes - it's often how they are able to give such cheap domain names - make sure you know exactly what you are paying for

Other companies give full access, at no cost, and still give cheap domain names.

*cough* :)

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

subtle ;) very subtle :D

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

for domain registration ive used http://names.co.uk for .uk domains and www.namecheap.com for .com .net etc


never had any problems with either of them :)

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

Who owns the domain when you regisiter then? Is it the company or you? Why is it only possible to register for a year or two and what do big companys like microsoft and google do?

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

Interesting article s1lv3r, any chance you could follow it up with some info on search engine optimisation and submission ?

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

Missed this question.

When you register a domain name, you own it, the company is really only acting as your 'agent' to register it on your behalf. - usually you can register a name up to 10 years (depending on what the extension is).
When it gets close to the expiry date of your domain name - you will be given the first option of renewing the name - long before anyone else gets the chance - i.e. a month + - with some registrars you'll find even if you miss the expiry date, you will still be able to claw back the name, and then renew it before anyone else does - though (of course) you'll find varying fees for varying agents.

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

When your domain name comes up for renewal do you have to do it through your existing agent or can you shop around for the best deal at the time?

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

forget liike a lot of us

Microsoft forgets to renew hotmail.co.uk domain

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

You can pretty much shop around for the best deal you like, in theory - bascially all you need to do is sign up with another registrar, and then transfer your name across from one to the other - usually when you transfer you'll then be asked to pay for another years registration (or however many years you want).

However, like I say, this is 'in theory' - the problem is that some registrars use various dirty tricks to stop you doing that - i.e. some of them will charge you a fee to transfer your name (you usually find this is the case in some (not all) of the really cheap offers) - so in effect you end up paying for the same amount as it would cost to register it for another year, if not more, with your old company, , you then have to pay again with your new company to register it with them.
Some of them will make it so difficult for you to transfer a domain name from one company to another - that it ends up taking a lot more time than you had originally planned - so you'll often find that you end up having to pay another years fee with your current one, because they've dragged their feet for so long, your name is about to expire - once you've done that magically your transfer request gets approved - and you're then free to pay for another years registration with another agent.
This happened to me recently, I had a domain name with namecheap, that was coming up for renewal, and I wanted to transfer it to my own company, it took nearly a month for it be approved, and in the end I had to pay for another years registration to 'reactive' my domain name with namecheap, because it had taken so long that my name had gone past the renewal date.

Does that all make sense?

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

yes it does thanks :)

Guess it's lucky then that I have a half decent domain registrar then because I wouldn't want all that hassle !

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

Thanks s1lv3r, lots of good information here.

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

Just thought I'd resurrect this thread, what's the best way to get your website listed on the search engines?

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

Ensure that the HTML structure is tidy and correct (i.e. use <h1>,<h2>,<h3> tags for headings and title & alt descriptions for images), get respectable sites to link to you then sit back and wait for a month or two.
Don't bother with <meta> tags, nobody uses them anymore.

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

Well Not much else I can do then, looks like I'll jsut have to sit back and wait :)

Cheers for the advice Richard

Great thread BTW Jon. :tu:

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

:blush: Thanks matey :)
I'd not really considered how my guide lacked actual HTML coding for beginners, maybe I should write an addition or at least link to some of the millions of good HTML guides external to CF.

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

Top idea :tu:

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

About time I got round to adding a recommended beginners guide to HTML, so here you go...

http://www.htmldog.com/guides/htmlbeginner/

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

I also find this useful..

http://www.echoecho.com/htmllists01.htm

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

heres a good one, you can test your code and see how it looks, great for beginers www.w3schools.com/html/tryit.asp?filename=tryhtml_basic

tutorial - http://www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

A good resource to promote your website is http://www.free-seo-ebook.com

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

Could I recommend that you remove Xreg from this article? My friend was unable to contact them to arrange a transfer and as a result had to pay Nominet £50 to retag his domains for him. Apparantly Nominet have received numerous complaints about Xreg.

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

Yeah, it's always important to get your domain names from a good reliable source :D

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

What? It's only £15+VAT for one domain name to change the tag going the Nominet route. And only a maximum of £30+VAT for more than 1

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

It didn't matter to me how long it is, all the info and precautions i needed to know on how to get my site registered was in the write-up and took 5 mins to read and understand, whereas reading how to create a website took days/weeks.

Nice one "John M", it helped me :tu:

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

My apologies it was £30, not £50 - it's still double the price it should have been if Xreg were any good.

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

thanks:) :angel:

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

Well you can slightly speed up the process by actually submitting them to the engines?? ^^

Each engine has a submission page but i recommend using
**Free**
http://www.webyield.net/webceo.html

for engine submission and keyword analysis

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

Dont submit to the search engines, it usually get ignored and some search engines blacklist automatic engine submissions.

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

New on the web site and browsing the posts and FWIW...

I see you recommend 123-reg.co.uk. My experinces with them have not been that good. They take forever to respond to simple requests via email and their phone number is a premium rate line and you pay good money to be left on hold. 0/10 for service in my book. Also take a look here for more infor on this provider.

Cheers
Bernie

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

Hmm, I find them very quick (by internet standards) to deal with. I registered another domain on Saturday and had a problem (my own casusing changed address and fecked things up). Fired off an email and expected to hear nothing till Monday but there was a reply sat in my inbox within an hour.

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

Hi,

I would recommend www.123-reg.co.uk I have been with them for several years, and yes there can be minor problems, but I prefer to stay put. Pricing is very good as well.

HOSTING.

Having organised you web you need to publish it somewhere, that's the real hard bit because often as not you don't really find out until you have taken the package on what you are in for. To cut to the chase >> Vision Internet are great. Loads of facilities at the back of the hosting package, and remember this is the motor that is going to drive your site on the net, if it's a clapped out old heap it's going nowhere. The back end facilities get really technical and include Fantastico, databases, Forums etc etc.

http://www.visn.co.uk

Take a look at the prices and the bandwidth, I'm on a Pro hosting package and it's worth every penny, previous to Vision I had a package with no support and twice the price and no facilities at all.

Leave it with you.

Cheers For Now.

Adrian.

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

I'm after creating a simple website so that I can showcase some fish that I have for sale.

I've stumbled across a site that although not finished to the standard I'd like for mine but has the general layout and seems to be very easy to create.

The only issue I have is that running the site looks like it could get expensive if I get much traffic or if I want to use my own domain name.

The site that gave me the idea (and the site I'd create it through) are:

http://www.freewebs.com/cichlids-angelfish/
http://www.freewebs.com/

Now I like the ease of creating the pages and how simple it will be to mark fish out of stock or add new ones as they become of a saleable size. Is there a cheaper site that will do similar things for me but at a more reasonable cost?

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

Really if you're running a business, or creating a website for your business (even if it's just a hobby thing) then it's a good idea to get a domain name and some paid hosting - having adverts and a free domain just doesn't look professional to potential customers.

I haven't used freewebs so can't comment on their website creator tools, but most hosts offer free templates and some kind of easy-to-use interface. Freewebs' paid services do seem a little on the pricey side, but that's probably where they get their money back from the free services.

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

I'm just no good at creating pages myself, spent ages trying to make three pages (in front page) with photos on them work but couldn't. :(

---------- Post added at 20:23 ---------- Previous post was at 19:45 ----------

Is there no package I can buy that will give me the features and flexibility of the site above but I can just install on bought webspace?

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

Shaun I can do you a basic hosting account that will allow you to use a proper shopping cart for a £1 a month. If that's the sort of thing your after.

Fantastico is a piece of software offerred by most hosts and allows you to install website applications like blogs, forums and shops in 1 click. Make sure if you get paid hosting it is provided as it is great for the starter website builder.

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

if you have hosting with access to cPanel you could look at the 'soholaunch' proggy available to install with fantastico. I haven't tried it, but it looks quite interesting???

<edit> must type faster :D

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

PM sent :tu:

---------- Post added at 22:18 ---------- Previous post was at 22:16 ----------

:tu: Looks promising. Will have a good read about both bits of software - thanks for the recommendation. :)

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

Quick question, the original guide says this forum is hosted by I-web solutions
Is that on a dedicated plan? or one of their listed shared linux/windows plans?
Seems awfully fast if on a shared plan (which is great :P)

From my own experience, if you want to register a com/net/org domain, go with Godaddy.
I've had little to no hassle with them and they seem to be the cheapest to goto
I had an associate of mine who used to work for them, he told me they make nothing from their sales of domains, which is why they're so cheap, but because of that, they try to convince you to buy other things during the registration process
But you do have full control of the domains, their control panel for managing domains is very extensive.

Hosting wise? depends on who you want to go with
There's plenty of free or cheap shared hosting plans in the UK, but once you move into the VPS/Dedicated arena, costs SOAR
If you're concerned about the cost, but want a dedicated or VPS server at a fair price...get one from the USA
But aim for a company who's datacentre is located on the east coast (lower latency/quicker response time)
My server is based in Dallas, Texas in the USA (West coast), but latency is AOK (Click link in signature to test loading time/responsiveness)

As for who to go with? check out www.webhostingtalk.com
You'll find reviews (Both bad and good) of hosting companies, you'll also find special deals posted in their "Hosting offers" forums by companies, which you sometimes don't find on their sites.

I have my own VPS, with 512mb of dedicated ram, 600gb of bandwith and a 60gb disk, it costs me roughly £21/$42 a month and is well worth it.
I use SLHost.com as my host.

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

AFIAK originally it was hosted elsewhere probably on a shared plan and paid for by the admins/mods. The KP from I-web offered to host the site for free which they took up. The site has advertising on it and now generates enough cash for the site to run on its own paid for dedicated sever.

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

Yea,it's hosted with 1&1, just noticed the link is at the bottom of the forum,
Be interesting to know what experience the server admins here have had with 1&1, because they don't tend to get rave reviews.

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

From what I've heard they're great as long as you know what you're doing, but when things go wrong they really go tits up. But that's the same with many big companies; VM being the perfect example of it.

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

Lol, to true.
Yea I heard everything is fine with the servers and whatnot, it's when you need support that things tend to go bad.

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

anyone know what the name servers are for virgin... i have my web space with them and registered a domain name with easily.co.uk.... i need to be able to point that address to my virgin webspace.. any help would be appreciated.

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

VM don't provide that service, your best bet is to use easily's own nameservers and set up a redirect.

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

thank you for the response... would you be so kind to briefly descibe how i set up a re-direct?

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

lookup 'masked web forwarding', easily say they support this function, which you will be able to access through your domain control panel.

Assuming you have your domain using their name servers it should just be a case of entering the address you want to forward to, i.e. your VM homepage addy, and enabling the option.

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

Spotted this and thought it worthy of sharing.

Free Ruby on rails book from sitepoint
http://www.sitepoint.com/books/rails1/freebook.php

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

Thanks handyman :tu:

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

....I could find on google.

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

me too.

What are we looking for?

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

Hey........

I didn't understand your questions.....

I mean website guide means?....:angel:

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

Thanks for the really cool tips..!

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

if you want to learn more about html. http://www.w3schools.com/ helped me. i know it can help you too. ive been working on my website for few days now. iL be launching it soon.

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

000WebHost are a very good free host with 1.5GB Disk Space, 100GB Bandwidth, PHP, MySQL and no ads!

Jack :D

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

Interesting article s1lv3r, any chance you could follow it up with some info on search engine optimisation and submission ?

Re: The "I want a website" Guide
 

Is so unblievably easy, it's unreal. I'd be happy to point you in the "right" direction. Drop me a PM..