General Web Site Information
Q: What does it take to have
a web site?
A: There are three basic elements that are needed
to make a web site available to the world:
Web site: This is a collection of web pages and
images that comprise the look and navigation of your site. These
files contain information about your company, group, business, etc
that is relevant to people you're targeting to visit your site.
Domain name: This is your address on the web,
usually in the form of www.yourbusiness.com. This name points visitors
to your site when they click on it or type it into their browser.
Hosting: This is the machine that makes your
web site available to visitors. The collection of files that comprises
your site is stored on this machine and made avaiable to visitors
who request them through your domain name.
Q: What are the costs involved
in getting a web site created?
A: The costs are most easily broken down if considered
separately:
The web site itself should start as a one-time investment with
small, static, single-page site costing under $200 to large, dynamic,
data-driven sites costing thousands. Your site needs will determine
the design and construction costs and should be considered as a
factor of what your business does and what its site's visitors expect.
For sites that need regular updating or have other maintenance needs
such as a shopping cart, there are usually two options: have the
designers under contract to maintain the site for you or have the
designers build a tool/interface for you to facilitate your own
updates. This will incur further costs either paid regularly to
the designer for maintenance, or up front to have the site maintenance
tools built.
The cost of a web site domain name is minimal. This is taken care of
through a company called a registar (such as Network Solutions)
and most offer similar services. Expect to pay around $10-35 per
year for each domain name registered. You may consider having more
than one domain name pointing to your site. However you handle your
domain's registration, make sure to have yourself listed as one
of the primary contacts -- often a web designer will 'handle' the
registrations for you and later when you want to take your domain
name elsewhere, you'll find that you don't have control of it (see
more about domains)
Finally, the hosting is a recurring cost paid to the service provider
to keeping your site available to the public 24 hours a day. There
are many good hosting companies that charge anywhere from $5 per
month into the $100s per month. Different sites will have different
hosting needs. For a static, informational site, expect to pay from
$10 to $20 per month. Many hosts will handle domain registration
as part of their services and some will also try to include web
design services as well, but be wary - many hosting companies sell
cookie-cutter web sites with no design or customization considerations.
(see more about hosting)
Q: What tools and technologies
are needed/used when building a web site? What do they all do?
A: Theoretically, a web site could be built using
nothing but a simple text editor program such as Notepad. However,
there are many tools available to web developers to streamline and
ease production:
Adobe Photoshop: Photo editing program –
probably one of the finest on the market. Uses extend from simple
resizing and cropping to full photo retouching and composite layout.
Adobe Illustrator: Works with vector graphics
– very handy for logo and symbol design, also very strong
with text.
Macromedia Dreamweaver: Very handy page editing
tool – wonderful for layouts and design.
Macromedia Fireworks: Image suite that does raster
and vector graphics – actually built and optimized for doing
web graphics.
Macromedia Flash: Can be used to develop movies,
games or other interactive content. It requires the end-user to
have Flash browser plug-in install (which most already do).
Other technologies: In order to perform some of
the functions that web sites need, different elements such as databases,
client- and server-side scripts, and programs are needed. Databases
may be MS Access, MS SQL, mySQL, or many others. Some of the more
popular scripting languages include VBscript, Javascript, PHP, ColdFusion,
and others. Programming may include JAVA, Visual Basic, C#, or a
host of other choices.
Continue to Domain Names Frequently Asked Questions. |
