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Setting Up Your Own WebsiteEasy to Set Up Websites |
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Setting Up Your Own WebsiteEasy to Set Up Websites |
If you want a website in order to tell people about yourself or your company, answer frequently asked questions, share information among members of an organization or in other ways communicate without actually selling anything, there are several website hosting companies that offer complete packages and good phone support. They will help you register a name for your website, provide you with tools to create your pages in a What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get tool that doesn't require any knowledge of web programming or HTML, and then provide a safe web server to "serve" your pages to the public without your having to get into the business of setting up your own machinery or software.
Some companies and organizations offer free or inexpensive websites, usually with a ready-made design (known as a template). With some, you must be a member. Others pay your way by showing ads on your site. Yola lets you easily build and host a professional website. The site is free but you don't get your own address (like www.mysite.com). For that you pay a few dollars a year.
Be careful which company you choose to set up your web page. Some will bombard you with spam or sell your email address to other spammers.
A solution that is not quite free but very inexpensive is to
register your domain name (your URL, for example: mybusiness.com) with
Network Solutions
.
They'll give you a free Web page for your domain where you can present information about your company.
GoDaddy.com
also gives you a free page when you register a domain name, so you can get
your own one page site with your own unique web address for about $10 a year.
Conversely, Yola will give you a free website (not just one page). If you want your own domain name (eg, www.mysite.com) it costs about $20 a year.
You can have a do-it-yourself website for from $15 to $200 a year. There are a number of companies that cater to people who want just one site and who are not particularly interested in learning the technical aspects of setting up a website. These companies differ from regular web hosting companies in that their emphasis is on providing:
The thing to be careful about is to choose a reputable company that offers
good tools for building
your website, a choice of graphic designs and templates, and good customer
support.
Yahoo! Web Hosting
offers a set of easy to use online tools.
www.GoDaddy.com
provides excellent support and a variety of site building tools, as does Web.com
.
Homestead
also specializes in serving the beginning website builder.
You will have a choice of several pre-designed pages, called templates. Most of the page building tools only allow you to edit certain parts of each page. You will, however, be able to add your own text and, usually, insert some of your own graphics.
If you're not sure you want to try this approach, these companies all offer a free trial period where you can try out the tools and see if this avenue is for you.
If you need to ask your website visitors to supply you with information, for example, in surveys, contact forms, feedback forms, forms with calculations, online polls or a customized form with detailed information about a proposed project, there are services and software such as Form Pro that allow you to build your own forms. has a neat and really easy-to-use Flash form builder. Just ask your web host first whether they support "sendmail." They'll know what you're talking about.