3.0 Building Websites - Summary

As mentioned in the section on Getting Started, there are 4 basic steps involved in getting a website onto the Internet:

  1. Build some web pages;
  2. Register a domain name (www.whatever.com);
  3. Buy some web hosting to host the web pages;
  4. Upload the web pages using file transfer protocol (FTP).

Here is a basic summary for getting started:

Building the site

When starting out it is advisable to do this using a simple text editor such as microsoft notepad. Not only is it the least expensive way to start, but because it offers absolutely no assistance with syntax or spelling, it forces you to learn the code at its root. Once your first few sites are underway, you can always move onto more sophisticated and time saving software at a later date, but having a good grasp of the code will allow you to refine what these produce because they tend to "stuff" unecessary padding code into the pages, which will simply confuse the search engine spiders and eat into your hosting package's bandwidth limits.

Write your pages to the latest standards (currently HTML 4.01 / XHTML 1.1 and CSS2.1 / CSS3) and in standards mode, and always keep good Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) techniques in mind if you want to attract visitors to your site. Make sure all page links work and test your pages across several browsers. Note you can download as many web browsers as you like onto your PC's desktop to do this, just ignore the "make this browser your default" message if and when required.

Uploading the site

Depending on the size and complexity of the site, building the web pages may take some time. With that in mind, it can be worth leaving purchasing the web hosting until this is almost finished, although registering the domain name as soon as possible is a good idea so that it won't be taken by someone else.

As for uploading the pages, FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is free and simple using software (often called a client) such as Filezilla. Your web hosting company will provide you with the relevant details required to log onto their server using FTP, typically a host name, username and password. Once logged on, uploading the pages takes seconds but it may take a day or two for the domain name to point to the site. After that, your site is live!

Once the site is live

Don't crack open the champagne just yet. The work doesn't finish once your website is live, infact, this is often where the hard work begins:

  • Validate your web pages at: http://validator.w3.org. If your code is correct a congratulations message will appear. If not, an error report will be displayed listing any errors. Simply correct and resubmit until it is approved.
  • Submit your site to search engines. They will eventually find your site on their own but to speed things up it is worth submitting to the big 3 (Google, Yahoo, MSN) and possibly also to Ask (which will require an XML sitemap).
  • Start building inbound links. This helps with pagerank and will also increase visitor traffic and website visibility.
  • Update your site reqularly. Keeping the content fresh is a good way of staying high in the rankings.
  • Check your statistics regularly. This feedback will help particularly if you wish to improve your site and build traffic.
  • Once you have reasonable traffic and your site is indexed by the search engines, then it's a good time to consider monetizing your website, even if it's simply to pay for your hosting. I would recommend Google Adsense as an industry leader.