I have spent endless hours in front of my PC building all kinds of websites.I am writing this article to share all that I have learnt. A website is really a very useful brochure to show to the rest of the world who you are as a webdesigner. You must ask yourself a few questions before starting any website:
Target=
To whom will this website be addressed to . teenagers, professionals, web design fanatics
Content=
Will I have to deliver content on daily/montly/yearly basis. Based on that I can now know if I will have to create a dynamic website using PHP/ASP/JSP if I need to regularly maintain my site or use plain HTML if this has to be done only once in a while.
Budget=
Do I have the money to buy myself a domain or webspace. Do I need to buy webdesign tools such as Macromedia Dreamweaver?
Hosting=
You need to have to host your site online after you complete it. So hosting is a very important part to be considered. Not all of us have a webserver running publicly on our workstations.Try to find the right host which meets your buget and does not cover your content with endless adverts
Now lets get to the core of your site the content, the content is very important. It should be something which makes others want to come back time and again. There are basically 2 different types of contents:
Static content:
If you are planning to create a website with only HTML or Flash then this is very easy, just start building your website with a proper editor and upload everything to your webspace if you dont have the budget for this then consider using Geocities which provides free hosting(with adverts).
Dynamic content:
If you need to deliver dynamic content, you need to evaluate your coding skills.In which language to you feel you are more comfortable . ASP, JSP, PHP. After you finish your evaluation now you assess the amount of traffic which might be coming to your website if its like 10-20 click per sec or below then all the 3 above will do nicely but if you are expecting 1000 click per sec or more then do consider using J2EE.
Get yourself a webserver APACHE for PHP, IIS for ASP/ASP.Net and TOMCAT for JSP for example.You pages will run in your webserver.
You now need a database, I personnally recommend MySQL its really easy to use and it works just great if you dont have a big budget and love open source. Note: Do remember that the database and the server that you choose for local development should be the same as those of your hosting provider! Else you will have loads of incompatibilty issues which will spring up like mushrooms.
Now you know in which language you want to code, which database you will use and on what webserver your codes will run. Its high time you get to your keyboards and start writing your lines of codes.
Graphics:
Graphics makes websites look attractive, however beware that too much graphics can have a negative effect in terms of loading time for your websites too many gifs, jpgs or heavy flash animations make your website take a longer time to load and may cause many a surfer to simply close down their browser window. So use graphics intelligently, seeing a beautiful flash can make many a mouth drop open but after the nth time that you see it, the excitement vanishes away.
Browser Compatibility:
Make you website as compatible as possible with most of the browsers on the market, may it be Internet Explorer, FireFox or Netscape.
Bring Traffic to your Site:
After you have successfully completed your website you need to bring users to it. Here below are a couple of ways of achieving this:
1.Search engines: Many search engines allow you to submit your sites to them such as Yahoo . If your site is indexed by typing of few words in a search engine can result in having your websites listed in the results page, people can find what they are looking for .
2.Forum: Give away the URL to your website on forums where people come to read regularly. On top of that Forums have a tendency to be indexed by popular search engines such as Google and Yahoo .
3.Mail: Always give your site’s URL in your mails or send mails to your friends about your website. If they find your site interesting it is sure that they will come time and again. Well thats all, I hope you will all start building your sites pretty soon.
javed
https://javedmandary.blogspot.com