How does the web surfer find a website?

In short - by typing in the URL, or in other words, the website address. So for example, if you wanted to find the website www.google.com, you would type in the address into your web browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox) address bar.

There are other ways to find websites (like search engines,) but behind the scenes websites are all being found by going to the websites address.

Registering your domain name

Rregistering a domain name gets you an official address for your website on the World Wide Web (WWW). With this 'official' address, the rest of the Web can find you.

Like your home address is unique in the real world, there also can't be any duplicate addresses on the Internet, otherwise no one would know where to go! In other words, domain names are unique addresses on the web. There are many companies out there that allow you to register the domain name for your web site. Prices vary, as does the quality of service, but at the end of the day, they all handle the details of getting your domain name listed.

These days, you will find many of the names you may be interested in registering are already taken. As I mentioned above, domain names have to be unique and many have been taken up.

Moving your web site files onto the server

After you have your domain name registered and your hosting service in place, the last step is to upload the website onto the server. You can transfer your website to your host's server using an FTP program.
An FTP program is a type of software that is used to move files from one computer to another over the Internet. FTP is the acronym for: File Transfer Protocol, this just means that this is a 'way' of moving files. There are several free FTP programs you can use to move your files onto the server, and many HTML editors and web design programs like Dreamweaver have FTP capabilities built in.

Designing your First website

The three ways you can build a web page

1. Use a pre-made template:
Website design templates are pre-made web designs, which can be customized to reflect your company's branding. Website design templates can be found in various formats like Photoshop and HTML. Many times these templates are compatible with HTML editors like GoLive, Frontpage and Dreamweaver.

Website templates can be very useful; they can be used by experienced web designers to 'jump-start' the creation of a custom website. They are also a way for people to put out great looking websites quickly with little or no knowledge of HTML and web design.

2. Use an HTML editor like FrontPage, Dreamweaver or GoLive:
HTML editors make building web pages feel like (to a certain extent) creating a document in Microsoft Word ... it's made pretty easy. But the downside is that you loose a certain amount of control of what you're doing and in some cases become dependent on the program.

3. Hand-code your HTML in a text editor like Notepad:That means your type in the HTML code yourself.

what is a website?

A website is just a number of web pages connected together with something called a link. In HTML there is a special tag called the 'link' tag, and it looks like this in its most basic form: <a href=""> </a>
And here is an example of the link tag with a destination filled in:
<a href=" http://www.dassnagar.net/"> Custom Web Design India </a>
Result: Custom Web Design India

It's safe to say that we have all used links when surfing the web. Whenever you click on a link that takes you to another page, you are using a link tag. The link tag is the most important tag in HTML; it makes the Internet interconnected!

Define the purpose of your website

When starting a website project, you must first clarify what the goals of the website are. Knowing your goals will impact on the choices you make when putting the website together and ultimately contribute to its success or failure.

This may sound obvious, but many websites seem to be put together where the goal is not kept in mind. The result is a messy website that is disorganised and harder to build and maintain.
So if for example, if the goal is to create an e-commerce website that sells products, then as a website designer, you have to consider things like the following:

• Do you need credit card processing capabilities? Are you going to need a shopping cart system to take orders?
• How many items will be sold on the web site?

This is just one example; the point to take away is that by defining the purpose, you can better prepare and get the right tools / people for the job.

Write out the text (Content) for the website :

Before you start writing any HTML, you should (in your favorite word processor) write out all the text that you need to include in the website, doing so will help you with the design process.

Another thing you should do is to make sure that the text is finalised before it gets to the website; it is much easier to correct things in a word processor than in an HTML page.

Choose a basic structural layout that will be used on all pages :

Armed with your website' text (complete text!) you can now choose a basic layout for your pages. You can go mad with some funky artsy website (and sometimes it can work), but most of the time, you should use standard layouts that people are used to:

Left side navigation. Top navigation. Right side navigation. When in doubt, think of books and how they are laid out.

Choose the basic color scheme and fonts for the site.

Your next task is to start considering the basic colors and fonts that you're going to use. You want to choose a style that fits the subject of the website. For example: pink doesn't do well for a hardware store . maybe some steel blues instead! The point to take away is to establish the style of the website before you start creating pages, otherwise you may find yourself redoing pages over again!

Build out the website.

With the above completed, your ready to actually start creating your web pages. All this really is, is using the structure you developed in the above steps to create your web pages and link them together.

Choose a domain name

All websites need a domain name, and your choice of a domain name can impact on how many people find it . so choose carefully! Here are some points to remember when considering your choice of a domain name:

Domain names that tell you something about the website are food for search engines and they help clue people in too. If for example you were building a website for a hardware store, a domain name like 'discountshop.com' is pretty good, it tells you everything about the website immediately. If you called it 'allshop.com' instead, you can argue that we are not giving such a clear message of what's the website about. Even if the shop store were actually called 'All Shop', I would go with 'discountshop.com'.

Search engines like Google or MSN will look at several elements of your web site to try and determine what your page is about. One of those key elements is the domain name. Google will look for keywords in the domain name that helps the 'Google bot' (Google's automated search software) to categories your website.

Register your domain name

This can trickier than you think, since many of the good domain names are taken. You can pretty much forget about single word domain names like, shop.com and buy.com, they are long gone! You will need to come up with combination words like 'discountshop.com'.

Today you have many more options for domains; in the past businesses could only register a .com's because .net and .org domains where reserved for special types of organizations. Those old restrictions are now gone, and there are a wide variety you can choose from:
.co.uk, .com, .net, .org, .tv, .biz, .tv, .in, .info and several others. In terms of the search engines, they don't really make a difference which ending you use.

Some people might argue that the first thing to do is to register your domain, then build your website. That may be true if your custom website design is impacted by the domain; for some this is the case, and for others it isn't. You can make that call.

Find a hosting company: what to look for in the hosting company.

Today, hosting websites cost much less than what it did just a few years ago, and that's a good thing. You can go from zero cost hosting, to very pricey solutions, depending on your websites needs.
What can affect a websites hosting cost:

Traffic - more traffic can cost you more per month. But for this to affect you, you would have to have a pretty popular web site. Since you are just starting out, I wouldn't expect that problem for a while.

Extra features / services - you may need to use a database (for e-commerce) or need many email accounts, extra disk space to store all your websites files. Each host will have a list of plans that you can choose from depending on your needs.

In the end you have to choose the hosting company and hosting plan that is best suited to for your website. Cheaper is not always best, but it may be good enough for you.

Upload your web site to the hosting companies servers.

Once you created your website, paid for your domain name, and picked your hosting company, it's time to upload the website onto your host servers for the world to see. Typically you would use something called FTP to do this; you hosting company should be able to help you with the details when setting up your account.

Some quick tips to remember

1. Keep web pages small - under 60k
2. Keep content headers (H2 tags) clear and to the point.
3. Keep paragraphs small.
4. Keep contact information (email - phone) easily found in the same place on all pages.
5. Keep the look and structure of the web pages consistent across all pages.
6. Provide a 'Home' button to take the user back to the cover page of the website.
7. Make sure links are always underlined. (Don't use CSS to remove the underline: big mistake if you do since people assume that underlined texts are links.)
8. The company logo should appear on every page in same spot and it should always be a link back to the home page.

Of course, if all of this seems a bit daunting, why not enrole the services of a professional website designer, and let them do all the hard work for you? Please feel free to visit our custom website design service.