Build a Website

Last Updated: July 3, 2008

For the Beginner

This section is for beginners or for someone who wants a website up and running in a short period of time.  These recommendations include using an all-in-one company that will register your dot com and use standard templates to set up your website.  For something a little more advanced, see my web design suggestions and website hosting recommendations.

Websites and Your Business

While a website for your business is better than not having a website, a business needs to have branding.  The company letterhead, business cards, website, brochures, and documents need to have a consistent look.  Templates are not unique and can be spotted a mile away.

Google

Google offers 23 templates to create a web page in minutes. You can share it with everyone in the world or only the people you select. Like any dot com, finding a name that someone else hasn't used already is difficult. Because Google is free, it may be even harder to find a name that is available.  I could not use any form of my first and last name and/or initials.  See our web page at Google.  There is a limited number of times per day the site can be viewed, so this really doesn't work for running a business.

BuildYourSite

BuildYourSite includes several wizards to create different kinds of web pages including an e-commerce, forms, flash, blogs, and photo album.  Their templates are far more sophisticated than Google's and look professional. The placement of photos and text didn't seem to be a random event as compared to Google.  They even provide services to obtain your own dot com domain name that you own.  I asked a question and received an answer within 15 minutes, so I feel comfortable that help is close by.  Our local elementary school Parent Teacher Organization (PTO) uses their services.

Own Your Domain Name

Beware of companies that own the domain name instead of you.  If they go out of business, your domain name is sold to someone else besides you.  You can always check who owns a website here.

This shows I bought TheFuhrmans.com from Domain-It.com on April 5, 2000.  I've paid through April 2017 to keep the domain name rather than paying an annual fee.  My fear is that I'd accidentally miss a payment and TheFuhrmans.com would be resold to the public.  This also shows my website hosting provider is ASmallOrange.com.  I pay $10 a month for them to hold my website on their server.  It's faster than using my home computer.  If you dug a little deeper, then you'd find my contact information as the owner.

Domain Name: THEFUHRMANS.COM

Registrar: DOMAIN-IT, INC.

Whois Server: whois.domainit.com

Referral URL: http://www.domainit.com

Name Server: NS1.ASMALLORANGE.COM

Name Server: NS2.ASMALLORANGE.COM

Status: clientTransferProhibited

Updated Date: 28-jun-2007

Creation Date: 05-apr-2000

Expiration Date: 05-apr-2017

Frustrations

Editing a web page is not like working with Microsoft Word or Microsoft Publisher.  It's difficult to place photos and text where you want them unless you know HTML and CSS, the computer languages of websites.  The old way to lock things in place is to use <tables>, but now it's <div>.  I still use tables.  Using <p></p> will provide a blank line every time the "Enter" key is pressed while <br> for "break" will omit the blank line.