Creating a Website

Select and Register a Domain Name

A domain name is your web address or URL (niform Resource Locator). this address can be purchased at a domain registrar that provides domain name search and sometimes other services like hosting, private registration and business name registration, internet protocol (IP) re-routing or forwarding, email accounts and hosting.

Some examples of domain registrars are www.networksolutions.com, www.godaddy.com.

Domain Name Considerations

1. Make it Understandable: make it easy to understand and avoid hyphens and underscores, if possible. if not, use only one hyphen.
2. Letter Duplication: Try to avoid duplication of letters (example: www.tuscanyyouths.com) or hard to type letters like "q" or "z".
3. Keyword Phrases: Consider incorporating a highly effective keyword phrase of your offering, especially if your business name does not reflect what you do. For example, a better domain name for a company named ABC LTD. that sells specialty grommets via the internet would be www.grommetsolutionsonline.com rather than www.abccompany.com.
4. Suffixes: Choose a primary domain name with a suffix like.com if you have a commercial company, or .org for an organization, .biz for businesses, .mobi for mobile, .info for information driven sites, .net for networks and .me for personal.you can also consider country codes if you plan to only do business in one country. you can purchase multiple domains with varying suffixes and then redirect them to your primary account.
5. Purchase and Renewal: Note that most domain registrars will list alternative names if the one you have decided upon has already been taken. Domain names are sold in time allotments for annual periods. if you are satisfied with the name that you have chosen, consider purchasing a longer time period. if you forget to renew your domain name, you may lose it.

Remember that you do not own your domain name. therefore, it it important that you keep your records of access to your account and renew before the expiry date so that you don't risk losing your web address.

Purchasing other Domain Names

Even if you already have a domain name, it is sometimes wise to purchase other names that can be used for marketing purposes and also to prevent your competitors from picking up keyword-phrased domains (e.g. ABC LTD. may want to purchase www.specialtygrommets.com or www.grommetsonlinedeals.com when it is running a reduced-price promotion.

Review Hosting Requirements

• Review your website assets like videos, images, flash and content and the required features you are considering that may add needed resources for hosting bandwidth and memory space.
• Make sure your hosting has the necessary capabilities for dynamic features and functionalities. hosting review sites can give you a list of options and considerations when choosing a host provider.
• Also ask associates and suppliers for recommendations and social media groups for suggestions about host providers to consider.

Review Hosting Requirements

When reviewing these hosting sites, consider bandwidth speeds and larger memory space if you have videos and images. most hosting providers offer value accounts that have ample space, but these are often shared by others.

for some features like e-commerce and other applications that contain private sensitive data, opt for a dedicated hosting service which offers speed, security and reliability.

Cloud Hosting

Cloud hosting provides businesses a choice of hosting options. it differs from local hosting because of its ability to spread the resources to maintain your website over multiple servers, thereby managing peak load and bandwidth issues.

there are many host providers now offering cloud host computing which gives site owners flexibility and control of a dedicated server service without having to but the equipment, and with better uptime, better performance and less hassle. check with the host providers for cost and features.

Generate Content

Regularly adding new content or updating existing content will keep visitors returning to your site and improve your search engine ranking. on a static site, the maintenance costs for a designer or developer can become high with freuent updating.

To circumvent this, many sites are now being built with a content management system (CMS), allowing you, the site owner, to economically self-edit the content and keep the site updated and fresh.

How to Create Fresh Content

It is one thing to want to refresh your site with relevant, useful content, but sometimes quite another to create that content. many of your content ideas will come from your marketing initiatives and from analyzing site metrics.

You may be surprised to find that you already have lots of great content that, with some repurposing and rewriting, would work well on your interactive website and social networks.

Here are some ideas that can help you overcome a "content block."

• Utilize customer comments and reviews for creating case studies and testimonials.
• Creat "how to " videos to support products and services.
• Share powerpoint presentations, via slideshares, amoung your social networks.
• Repurpose existing content. for example, one blog post can be repackaged for different media you can extract 10 tips from a blog article and tweet each idividually, you can create a podcast using inormation from your blog and you can put content on facebook.