Monthly Archive for May, 2010

Favicon – What it is and why it matters

Published on May 17, 2010 in Website Building Basics. 0 Comments Tags: , .

If you look up in your web browser’s address bar, next to the website address, you’ll see a little picture. This is called a FavIcon (short for favorite icon). The original purpose for it was that when you save a website into your favorites or bookmarks, the favicon picture would be saved there next to the website name as an additional reminder of what the site is.

Eventually, browsers started showing the favicon right in the address bar next to the website address. There are several good reasons to have a favicon on your site and I’ll tell you why and how to do it below.

BRANDING:

Whether your site is for a company or is the main center of your work, you should be branding it. Your favicon picture should be your logo or something descriptive of your site or your company. If it is a company, you should take every opportunity to put your logo somewhere where people will see it. If not and it’s just your site, your favicon will become a logo and branding not only on your website, but in peoples bookmark or favorites list!

Consider that someone may have fifty or more bookmarks in their favorites list. If more than half of them just have the generic browser favicon, then you are instantly going to stand out in the list and draw the eye to your bookmark, begging the user to click on it.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Do search engines rank you higher if you have a favicon? Continue reading ‘Favicon – What it is and why it matters’

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Choosing a platform for your website

Published on May 17, 2010 in Website Building Basics. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Ok, so you finally pulled the trigger and signed up with a webhost, got a domain name and now you’re ready to get your fancy new website up and running… So what platform are you going to use? Did you just look at me like I fed you a spoonful of worms?

Well lets start with what a platform is. Just like the word implies, it is what your website will sit on. There are many platforms out there ranging from plain old vanilla HTML web pages to using WordPress blogging software to fancy Content Management Systems (CMS) like Joomla. Here, we’ll discuss each of these platforms and briefly explain what they are and how they work.

HTML FILES:

HTML files are the great grand daddy’s of the internet. HTML is short for Hyper Text Markup Language. It is the original idea that gave us the ability to click on words (links) and have them take us to other pages and to make a page appear on the internet.

With HTML files, you manually write each page using either a plain text editor like notepad if you know HTML code or you can use a program like Expression Web which allows you to create a web page like a Word document by simply typing and dragging and dropping. Whichever way you use to create the page, when you’re done you save the page as a .html file and then you upload it to your website.

If you have a site that isn’t going to change often and isn’t going to be very large, HTML can be a simple solution, especially if you are using a program like Expression Web, which does all of the coding for you. You simply type the content you want, drag and drop pictures and files onto the page and then program generates the HTML code for you.

HTML can also be nice since you don’t need any other software or special configurations to make it work. You can literally save a copy of your website and Continue reading ‘Choosing a platform for your website’

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Choosing a web hosting company

Published on May 17, 2010 in Website Building Basics. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Choosing a web hosting company is one of the most important decisions you can make. Choosing a good web host will result in your site having great uptime, you getting good support and having a lot of useful tools provided for you. Choosing a bad webhost will result in nothing  but headaches and downtime for your site and email.

Here are some suggestions on what to look for in a good web host.

If you’re just getting started in putting up your own site, I recommend going with a low cost web host like Powweb. This site is hosted on Powweb and I couldn’t be happier.

Powweb is a full featured web host that gives you huge bang for your buck. Many other hosting companies will give you cheap super basic hosting but then try to tack on expensive charges for every little thing you want to do on the site whether it be more bandwidth, more storage, more email addresses, etc. Powweb is one flat rate charge which includes just about everything you could want in a website. 

  • unlimited bandwidth (transfer) -Others charge you for extra data being sent from your server.
  • unlimited storage – others charge you for more space on their servers to save your web files to.
  • unlimited email accounts – others give you a limited number of email accounts
  • 75 databases – others give you no databases or a few at best
  • Run as many websites from one account as you want. No extra charges – Unlimited!

Powweb really does give you everything but the kitchen sink at a very aggressive price. Of course, I’m biased because of my good experiences with Powweb, so by all means check out all the other hosts you want to, but make sure you come back and compare them to Powweb. I’m pretty sure you’ll end up signing up with them as there isn’t much out there that can give you more for  your money than Powweb does.

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Choosing a domain name

Published on May 17, 2010 in Website Building Basics. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Choosing a domain name is probably one of the toughest decisions to make when making a website.

Here we’ll discuss pros and cons as well as good strategies when picking the perfect name for your site.

Competition
One reason choosing a name is so tough is because it’s not enough to choose the coolest, snappiest name you can think of, or even the most descriptive. Why? Because you are competing with everyone else in the world for domain names! Odds are, if you are choosing a name about a fairly common topic, someone else has thought of some of the same domain names as you.

Alternative domain names
This is where you have to get creative and thoughtful. Are you ok with using a domain other than .com, such as .net, .org, .biz, etc? There are differing schools of thought on this. Some people think you should go with .com at all costs because visitors may not remember your site was .biz. Some also think that people still just try typing in names based on topics. For example, if you wanted to find out about soccer, you’d go to soccer.com and hope it was about pro soccer as opposed to soccer uniforms. Continue reading ‘Choosing a domain name’

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Introduction

Published on May 17, 2010 in Website Building Basics. 0 Comments Tags: , .

If you’re here it’s because you are at least considering making your own website.

The Problem: Paying someone else to make and host a website for you can be amazingly expensive and you have little direct control of the site.

Here, I will help you learn to setup your own website that you can fully control. My goal is for you to find it easy and even fun while using free or inexpensive tools that help you avoid headache inducing programming and coding tedium.

Believe it or not, putting up a website can be cheap, easy, and fun! Continue reading ‘Introduction’

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