Business on the Web

Getting you Business on the Web

Everybody assumes you have a website for your business these days. In fact it seems a bit unusual if you have not. So how do you go about it?

 

Website Name

The first item on the agenda is to get a domain name. This is the address of your website. Normally you would make this the same as your company name, if it is available. Suppose your company was called "Blue Cheese". You could search for a domain name of: www.bluecheese.com or www.bluecheese.co.uk.

The suffix denotes the type of organisation. So .co.uk would mean a company in the UK .com a company without specifying a particular country. (Each country has it's own suffix.)

To search if a domain name is available you can go to: www.allwhois.com/cgi-bin/allwhois.cgi

When you register the domain name the fee will pay for 1 or 2 years after which you will need to pay again if you want to keep the name.

 

Content

The next part is to decide what content to put on your website. If possible get digital versions of your logos etc. Have a look at other websites to pick up ideas and make a note of them.

 

Get your website going

Now you need to get your website hosting arranged. You will need a company that will actually run your website. They will hold your web pages and handle your email address that will come with the website. There are many to choose from offering different packages depending on your needs. For example one is:

www.clook.co.uk

They will arrange for the domain name to be set up for you. The ISP will have administration tools to allow you to maintain your website upload web pages, create databases, read email etc.

 

Design your site

Now you need to design your website. You can create web pages using a text editor such as notepad. Usually it is much faster and easier to use some software. Sometimes the ISP will provide you with software or have a CMS (Content management System) already installed that you can use. There will be a learning curve but once you have got to grips with it you can make changes to your site very quickly. One of the most popular is postnuke (www.postnuke.com).

Other popular tools include Frontpage (from Microsoft), Dreamweaver (from Macromedia), Net Objects Fusion, there are even various free ones e.g. NVU.

 

Upload your pages

Once you have your pages ready you will need to upload them to your ISP using ftp (File Transfer Protocol). Most of the website tools will have an ftp agent included in them. All you will need to supply are the username,password and the website address to use. You may also need to supply the directory on your website that the pages will need to be saved to.

 

Test your site

Once you have uploaded your pages you should test your website to make sure your pages look as you expect and that the navigation between the pages works.

 

Conclusion

This brief article has only scratched the surface on setting up a website but hopefully it will serve to get you started!